The Invasion (will not be televised)
by norickayer
Summary: In a world without superheroes, six teenagers stumble upon a dying alien who gives them the power to shape-shift. America, Eli, Kate, Tommy, Serrure, Billy, and Teddy are the only people who can stand against the alien invasion- because they're the only ones who know about it. When one of them confesses to being a member of the invasion force, well- that's just the beginning.
1. The Infestation

_**Characters**__: America, Billy, Cassie, Eli, Kate, Noh-Varr, Teddy, Tommy, Loki, kid!Loki (going by Serrure in this fic)  
><em>_**Pairings**__: Billy/Teddy  
><em>_**Warnings**__: mind control, body-snatching aliens, anxiety, mentions of self-harm, dehumanization of an alien character  
><em>_**Notes**__: Inspired by __Avamorphs__ by suzukiblu._ _This isn't quite a Young-Avengers-in-the-Animorphs-World AU, as some details of the setting (Skrulls and Kree instead of Andelites, etc) are from Marvel. Skrulls don't have a two-hour limit in morph (or else Teddy couldn't have been raised human), but the humans with morphing ability do._

_I was motivated to post more Loki-centric Young Avengers content by an anonymous reviewer who left me a message on __Soulmates (are no excuse)__. This fic actually includes Loki (Agent of Asgard) and Kid Loki as separate characters, making this fic contain 100% more Loki than usual._

_To my anonymous reviewer (you know who you are): It must kill you to know that someone, somewhere is enjoying themselves. U mad, bro?  
><em> 

"I'm sorry!" pleads the slug wrapped around Serrure's brain. "I was ordered into this host; it wasn't my decision!"

"It is now," America replies, glaring dispassionately down at her friend's body lying huddled in the dirt.

Serrure Loki 645 inhales sharply. Ze couldn't have mistaken her meaning: _Get out of Serrure's head._

Serrure's eyes glance to each of the other Animorphs, but of course no one will step in. No one will step forward to defend the creature that's been controlling their teammate's body.

No one says it, but everyone is thinking the same thing:

_Get out or we'll make you_.

The yeerk lifts up Serrure's hands and brings them to his left ear. With a wet slurping sound, and a quiet _pop_, a small greyish slug falls out of Serrure's ear and into his hands.

He immediately starts to cry.

My name is Billy. I can't tell you my last name, or where I go to school. I can't even tell you where I live. If I do, the yeerks will find us, and then there will be no one protecting Earth from the invasion.

I know it sounds incredible, but there are aliens among us. You've probably seen one, even if you didn't realize it at the time. The Skrulls are shape-shifters, and can look like anything they want. The pink Kree are hardly distinguishable from humans at all. But _they_ aren't the dangerous ones. The aliens you really have to look out for are the yeerks.

Yeerks are parasitic slugs in their natural form. A hundred years ago they lived in shallow pools on their home planet. Then a Kree accidentally gave them space travel and the whole Universe is still regretting it. They've been invading planets ever since. A yeerk crawls into your head through your ear and wraps itself around your brain. Once it's there, you can sense everything that happens to you, but you can't stop it, because the yeerk is in control. It will walk your body to school or to work. It will eat your breakfast for you and talk to your family. The worst part? It has access to all of your thoughts and memories, so it can impersonate you perfectly. No one will ever notice a difference.

Anyone could be controlled by a yeerk: your best friend, your boss, even _you_.

And that's why I can't tell you who I am. It's too risky. Anyone could be a yeerk.

Even one of us.

We call ourselves the Animorphs. We're Earth's last hope against the invasion. I know we don't look like much, a handful of mismatched teenagers against bodysnatching aliens, but there's more to us than meets the eye.

Eight months ago, we were just six normal teenagers walking home from school. We took a shortcut through a condemned building that night, and our lives changed forever.

We found a dying alien: a Skrull princess. She told us about the yeerk invasion, and before she died she gave us a way to fight back. With Skrull morphing technology, we can turn into any animal we touch. We can be as small as an ant, or as large as a hippo. We can be fast as a cheetah or as observant as an owl.

We may not have magic or super-strength, but for lack of better word

we're superheroes.

We've been keeping the yeerk in a jar. It's maybe three inches long, and flat like a fluke. It doesn't have eyes or ears, so I'm not worried that it will know I'm there as I watch it swim idly in circles.

I wonder if it knows what we're going to do to it. Actually, _I_ wonder what we'll decide to do with it. To survive, yeerks need a nutrient that isn't native to the Earth. Every three days they have to leave their hosts to absorb Kandrona radiation in one of their hidden yeerk pools.

Depending on how long it's been since it visited the pool, we may not have to do anything. It may just starve in that jar, unseeing and unaware.

The yeerk's name is Loki 645, according to Serrure. The real Serrure, that is, not the one we've been working with for the past eight months. The poor kid cried his eyes out as soon as he was free. Tears leaking down his cheeks, he still tried to tell us his story, to warn us about the yeerk threat and what he'd seen at the yeerk pool.

Some hosts fall to the ground when they're freed. They aren't used to being in control of their body anymore and have to get used to moving their mouth and supporting their own weight again. Serrure spoke as clearly as was possible through sobs, and had no trouble standing.

"Loki 645 wasn't in control the whole time," Serrure told us. "Ze isn't very good at pretending to be 14. Ze had me go to school on my own, but there was always the threat that it would take control if I stepped out of line, or tried to tell someone."

He's still a bit shaken, but he's calmed down since last night, when we first freed him from his yeerk.

Talking to Serrure now is just unsettling. The way he acts is familiar, but not exactly the same as I'm used to. Gestures and facial expressions I thought were integral to his personality are now completely absent. Was that Loki 645? How much of our teammate was made up?

Serrure's been a yeerk host for so long, I'm not sure I even remember how he acted before he was infested.

How did we not notice? How did we not know our teammate was a yeerk?

"This is a rescue mission," Kate announces to the group. We're all hanging around this storage space that her dad technically owns. It's only about the size of a classroom, but we still call it the Warehouse.

My twin brother Tommy has been lying flat on his back on a bench, but he almost jumps up at Kate's words.

"Rescue mission?" he asks. His best friend David is a yeerk host. Ever since Tommy found out, he's been waiting for a chance to rescue him. There haven't been many opportunities.

Eli frowns at Tommy and shakes his head slightly. Tommy ignores him, and continues to stare at Kate.

"The yeerks are going to notice when Serrure doesn't show up to the yeerk pool on schedule," Kate continues. "They'll want to know why."

"They'll re-infect him if they find him," Eli says grimly

"So, what?" Tommy asks, "We keep hiding him in the Warehouse forever?"

That doesn't seem realistic. Even Noh-Varr doesn't live here 24/7, and although this area is pretty low-traffic, someone is bound to notice if the Warehouse is constantly occupied by a teenager.

"Maybe they won't notice?" Tommy says hopefully. "I mean, what did they want with scrappy little Serrure, anyway?"

"Oh shit," America realizes. "Don."

My stomach drops, and we all turn to look at each other in horror. Don is a med student, and Serrure's half-brother. Serrure adores Don, wants to be just like him.

The thing is, Serrure is just a kid, barely 14. Other than the morphing power, there's no reason for the yeerks to bother with such an inconsequential host.

Except that their dad is a Senator. And if Serrure's off the table…

"We can't just kidnap a college student," Teddy says, "can we?"

"Where would be put him?" I wonder aloud.

No one answers. We all trade glances. It has never been more obvious how ill-prepared we all are to thwart an alien invasion. We haven't even graduated high school. We've been lucky and careful, but we don't really know what we're doing.

"If we can't remove Don, we can stop the yeerks from realizing Serrure's free," Noh-Varr suggests. Noh-Varr is fairly new to the team, and to Earth. He's a Kree, probably one of the last free Kree in the sector. They blew up their own planet to keep it out of yeerk hands, but most of the survivors are yeerk hosts regardless.

"We're not sending Serrure back into the yeerk pool," America says firmly, leaving no room for argument.

Without meaning to, I glance back at Serrure, sleeping fitfully on a makeshift bed. I agree with America. I don't even want to send Serrure home to his jerk-ass dad, let alone sending him, alone, into an alien base.

"Maybe Serrure doesn't have to go."

I whip my head around, because that was Serrure's voice!

And there he is, 14 years old and looking like trouble, his lips pulled into a knowing smirk.

The clothes are wrong: over-large and sagging around his body.

"Teddy?" I ask. He's the only one of us who can morph into human form. He says it takes practice, and he's certainly had enough, growing up with his shapeshifting powers. It's easy to forget that Teddy is really a Skrull, since he was raised as a human for the past 15 years.

"They're going to find out," I tell them, my anxiety rising. Going into the yeerk pool? Sending Teddy, my boyfriend, into the den of body-snatching aliens?

I try to swallow around the lump in my throat.

"You can't," I try to tell him. I get half of the words out before my voice turns into a shriek. I snap my jaw shut.

"We won't send him alone," Noh-Varr reassures me, all military professionalism. His tone is somewhat less effective now that I've seen him flail in excitement over the new Nicki Minaj album.

Eli asks something, but the exact words are indistinguishable under the roar of thoughts rushing through my head. Noh-Varr's answer somehow makes it through.

"Well, someone has to morph the yeerk."

And isn't that a disgusting thought? Shrinking down, losing limbs and hair and eyes and everything that makes us human. Becoming a parasite, a mind-controller.

"I'll do it," I rasp, because I can't just let Teddy go without me.

"No, you won't," Eli says. He acts like he's the leader, but we aren't military. We don't have a strict hierarchy. I glare at him and look to Kate, but she shakes her head too.

"Billy, you can barely breathe just thinking about this," Kate says, not unkindly. "You don't have to take every mission."

There's nothing more to say. I concentrate on evening out my breathing as my teammates continue to plan.

Eli will morph yeerk.

Teddy will morph into Serrure, and will enter the yeerk pool with Eli in his pocket. He'll kneel at the edge of the pool and drop Eli in, making it look like the yeerk is coming from his ear. ("No one will be looking that closely," Noh-Varr reassures them, "it's not the incoming hosts they have to worry about.") Kate and America will morph bugs and ride in on Teddy's clothing. Serrure assured them that Loki 645 hadn't told zir superiors about the Animorphs (for whatever reason), but Kate and America will try to make sure their cover is safe. They'll do some recon, and if they have an opportunity they'll sabotage some equipment. Tommy and Noh-Varr will be hawks, playing lookout. After one and a half hours are up, Teddy will be forced to the end of the pier again to reclaim his yeerk. Eli will make sure to be there, or risk having to de-morph in a pool full of parasites.

"Try to pick him up with slight-of-hand, but if your head is forced under, Eli may have to infest you to keep out other yeerks," Noh-Varr warns. Eli and Teddy share uneasy glances, but it can't be helped. They can't let Serrure's cover be blown, can't be responsible for Don's infestation.

My job is to stay and watch over Serrure.

All the fight has drained out of me, and I just nod and wave away my friends' concerns as they prepare to leave.

"I'll be fine," I hear myself say. "Serrure's safe with me." I try to smile, but the effort is too great.

"We'll be back soon," Teddy whispers in my ear. He leans in for a kiss, and I move my head so that he hits cheek instead of lips. He looks surprised, but doesn't push. He just squeezes my shoulder and turns to go, shifting into Serrure's smaller form as he walks.

Teddy's morphing is almost graceful. It starts from one hand and spreads outward, the color shifting first. Teddy's ruddy complexion being replaced with Serrure's olive skin. Black hair replaces blond. His facial features shrink and change: the jaw softens, the nose sharpens, eyes shift position just slightly in his skull. Then, all together, his body shrinks. Serrure is the shortest of the group, and Teddy is the tallest, along with Noh-Varr. Watching one turn into the other would be hilarious at any other time.

"Bye," I breathe as the door to the Warehouse closes. I open up my backpack and dig out my 3DS. With Serrure asleep, I need something to distract me.

_Ten minutes into the mission; 110 to go._

_Tap tap tap_ goes my stylus on the card table.

_Tap tap tap_ goes my foot on the floor.

Serrure is still asleep, or pretending to be.

_Twenty-five minutes into the mission; 95 to go._

I snap my fingers in front of Serrure's face. He grimaces but doesn't otherwise react.

I guess he really is asleep.

_Forty minutes into the mission; 80 to go._

My 3DS runs out of battery. Noh-Varr lives here in the Warehouse on and off, so there's a stolen generator hidden under a crate. I could use it to charge my DS, but what if someone hears it and comes to investigate?

Anyway, as I look over at the crate housing the generator, I think to myself, that seems like a lot of work.

_One hour into the mission; one hour to go._

A thought strikes me: what if Serrure was a voluntary host? What if we can't trust anything he says? What if the yeerk made plans Serrure doesn't know about, or what if there are security measures in the yeerk pool Noh-Varr hasn't heard of?

Dozens of contradictory possibilities fill my brain, but they all agree on one thing: What if it's a trap? What if all of my friends are captured? What if it's only me left?

Serrure slumbers on, and I reassure myself that the mission isn't over yet.

My team will return, safe.

_75 minutes into the mission, 45 to go._

Serrure has been infested for longer than we've had morphing powers. I became friends with a yeerk. I played video games with a yeerk. Teddy argued with a yeerk over which pokemon generation is the best. A yeerk introduced Noh-Varr to pancakes and bacon. Kate taught a yeerk how to play gin rummy. Tommy pushed a yeerk into the swimming pool this past summer. A yeerk habitually tags after America, teasing her like an unwanted little brother.

A yeerk looked up at Teddy in awe and declared that he was 'an improbably dashing prince'.

My eyes are drawn to the mason jar holding the yeerk. Loki 645 swims on, unaware.

_90 minutes into the mission, 30 to go_.

What if Don is already infested? What if the team has already lost? What if Teddy was found out, and he's sitting in a cage with the other hosts, screaming for me _right now_?

What if Serrure never wakes up? What if the yeerks already know about the team? What if Serrure wasn't the only one who has been infested?

What if Eli is being controlled by a yeerk, too? What if it's Kate?

What if it's Teddy, and our whole relationship has been an act?

I tap my fingers on the top of Loki's jar and wonder,

'_What do the yeerks know? What have you told them?_'

_115 minutes into the mission, 5 to go_.

_Snap snap snap_ goes the rubber band on my wrist. Tiny jolts of pain run through my arm at each _snap_, but it's not enough to distract from my racing thoughts.

The team is almost back, I remind myself. Don't do anything stupid.

They'll be back soon.

_125 minutes into the mission, 5 minutes overdue_.

I try to wake Serrure again, but he's still out cold.

_Snap snap snap_ goes the rubber band, but it isn't enough anymore.

I try to remember the list of substitutes that Teddy gave me. I can imagine exactly what it looks like, taped to the wall beside my desk at home. "Alternatives to Self-Harm" it says in big blue letters. Underneath is a list. 1: rubber bands. 2: Ice. 3… _what was 3?_

_137 minutes into the mission, 17 minutes overdue._

They could be dead they could be captured they could be infested

I need to calm down. I need to breathe naturally, but I can't. I suck in air desperately instead.

If I was a normal kid I could just call Teddy, or my mom. But I can't because Teddy is on a mission and my mom can't know about yeerks so instead I'm shaking Serrure's shoulder because I _can't be alone right now._

_145 minutes into the mission, 25 minutes overdue_.

I can't

be alone

right now

The care I take in unscrewing the lid of the yeerk's jar belies a calmness I don't feel. My thoughts are racing and my breath is close behind.

Serrure slumbers on, unaware of the mistake I'm about to make.

I slip a hand into the jar. The water sloshes out and onto the floor. I wrap my fingers around the yeerk, which isn't as easy as it sounds. It's slimy and sleek and doesn't want to be held, but I grab it firmly.

Handing someone else control seems wonderful now, but I know I won't feel that way later.

The team is 25 minutes overdue.

They're dead or captured or worse.

There's nothing to risk now.

I bring the yeerk up to my ear.

Loki 645 tentatively reaches out and connects to the host's senses. Ze blinks the host's eyes. Ze glances around the room. _'We have eyes_,' ze notes.

The clarity and wavelengths of light visible tells Loki 645 that the host is human, without even connecting to surface thoughts. The room is familiar: the Warehouse.

Serrure is sleeping in the corner.

But- if not Serrure- who is the host?

Loki 645 reaches further, and brushes the host's thoughts.

_Fear regret hopelessness_ come and go in a flash, leaving only a cloying, heavy emptiness behind.

Loki 645 doesn't understand what's happened, why ze is here and not dead or in the jar. Ze touches the host's recent memories-

Billy flinches back, lashes out. Loki 645 is not fully integrated into the host's Billy's mind, so the gesture works. Billy's memories are cut off.

Loki saw something, though. Ze saw enough.

When the team returns half an hour later, triumphant and covered in yeerk pool fluids, they find Serrure still sleeping off Noh-Varr's Kree sedatives, the yeerk's jar empty, and Billy sitting on the floor in the middle of the room apparently playing tic-tac-toe.

"What'd you do to the slug?" Tommy asks casually, ringing out his skintight morphing shirt. A couple teaspoons of sour liquid form a puddle on the floor around him.

Billy points to his own head and smiles in an unfamiliar way.

"Billy decided he needed a chaperone," Loki 645 says with Billy's voice. "And FYI, tic-tack-toe doesn't really work when you share brainspace."

I'm stupid and weak and I could've gotten all of us killed. If Loki 645 had fully integrated into my brain, if ze had taken control, ze could have made me kill Serrure, or betray my team. Ze could have had me lead my own parents right into the yeerk pool, and I wouldn't have had any way to stop it.

I'm a superhero. I'm the last hope for humanity. I should be brave and strong but I'm scared all the time. I don't know what I'm doing, and I'm just so tired I guess it felt like it would be worth it to have someone else in control for once.

Loki isn't in control, though. We're not even really fighting for it. If I consciously decide to move or speak, I can do it, but so can Loki. If I'm not thinking about keeping my body still, ze can make us sit up or walk over to the door.

It's weird. Scary.

But… it's not _bad_.

"Get the fuck out of Billy, you disgusting piece of shit," Tommy hisses, pushing our my shoulder against the packing crate that hides Noh-Varr's generator.

Loki 645 blinks our my (fuck it) our eyes innocently. I didn't even know I could do that.

I can't read the yeerk's mind or anything, but we're some level of enmeshed, with zir entire body wrapped around my brain like this. I can feel loose ideas and feelings at the periphery of Loki 645's presence, as if there's some amount of emotional bleed-through going on.

There's sharp, cold fear there, and dense, sticky guilt. But there's also an undercurrent of excitement, and a small, carefully protected kernel of hope.

I never really thought about yeerks feeling those things before. I guess I assumed yeerks were all about domination and hatred.

Loki 645 is mostly petty annoyance and sarcasm, so far. Even though Loki 645 is an alien, it's like talking to Tommy or Kate more than Noh-Varr.

"Maybe if you asked us nicely," my voice purrs. I know we're saying it only because I can feel my lips moving. The way Loki 645 talks is entirely unlike me, and not identical to Serrure, either.

I haven't really thought about yeerks having personalities, either.

"How did it even get out of its jar?" Teddy asks the group in general, nudging the open container of liquid with his foot.

"Billy can't have don't it himself, right?" America says, furrowing her brows in doubt. She crosses her arms and leans her weight onto her left side, as she does when she's uncomfortable.

"He's smarter than that," Eli replies, and I can no longer tell whose guilt is more pronounced: the yeerk's or my own.

"Yeah, no one would _want_ a slug in their brain," Tommy agrees. His way of defending me is to make stupid backhanded jokes at my expense, and this is no different. Tommy doesn't really _do_ feelings, but I've seen him rip out the throat of a yeerk-controlled human before, and I know he wouldn't be this gentle with any other host.

Loki 645 and I are silent.

Surprisingly, it's Noh-Varr who comes to the rescue.

"There _are_ voluntary yeerk hosts," he reminds us. The team is silent, probably remembering their recent trip to the yeerk pool. I've been down there only once, on the first mission we took as a team all those months ago. The pool complex is a vast underground cavern that spans an entire city block. In the center is the actual pool, a deep tank inset in the concrete floor, full of murky greenish water and thousands of tiny slimy slugs. One wall is lined with metal cages that house the human hosts while the yeerks feed. They shake the bars, scream and cry and pray and even sing, sometimes, so loud you can barely hear anything else.

Further out, there are the more solid cells for the alien hosts, Kree and Skrull and Hork-Bajir, who are stronger and more dangerous than humans, and need stronger bonds and more guards to prevent them from escaping.

I only caught glimpses of the voluntary host lounge.

There are no bars, no chains, no screams there. A single Kree stands guard, but there's little need; the human hosts who wait there wouldn't try to escape. They want to be there, for whatever reason. They have a couch and a shitty TV and I think I saw two teenagers playing X-Box.

I wonder if Call of Duty can drown out the screams.

My teammates likely saw the same things today. The memory must be even more fresh in their minds.

I glance between my teammates and find an extra head.

There's a short blonde girl standing behind Eli, mostly hidden from my view. She's wearing jeans and a hoodie, but she's still rubbing her hands along her arms as if she's cold.

Loki 645 has noticed her, too.

'_That's another host from the school_,' ze tells me, speaking only in my mind. _'Her yeerk is Doom 362_.'

"You saved someone?" I say in amazement. We all went in that first time to spark a jailbreak. We barely made it out in one piece.

Eli steps closer to the girl, as if to protect her from us.

'_What's her name_?' I ask Loki 645.

Ze is silent. I reach out, but feel only the existing mix of fear/guilt/excitement/hope. Then, something else floats to the surface: trepidation.

'_I don't know_,' ze admits. '_It didn't seem important at the time_.'

My team stares at us. They look as tired as I am. They look young and weary and unprepared for the responsibilities a dying Skrull princess foisted on us. Kate's hair is a rat's nest, Teddy's shirt is covered in slime, Eli looks like he went three rounds with the Hulk, and Tommy looks like a drowned raccoon.

I look past them all at the little blonde girl who might be the only person less prepared for this than we are.

"I'm Billy," I tell her. "and Loki 645," my yeerk adds.

"Cassie," she says. I expected her voice to be timid or raspy from disuse, but it's not. It's clear and strong, like iron molded by a blacksmith's hammer. She steps forward, passing Eli to look me in the eyes, and I recognize her.

She's in Serrure's class. Her step-dad is the cop who comes to school periodically to teach us about 'the dangers of drug addiction'. I wonder if he's the reason she was infested, or if she just was in the wrong place at the right time.

I'm not sure what to do about my team or about my the yeerk, but I know what to do with angry, damaged teens. I pull my lips into a smile I don't feel.

"Welcome to the Animorphs."

_**End Notes**__: In canon, Loki subsumed kid Loki into zirself, thereby destroying kid Loki as a separate entity. Ze does come to regret this action, and tries to redeem zirself. But I thought, what if Loki had the option to give kid Loki his life back? What would Loki have left, without the child's body or identity or role? Wreaked by guilt and craving personal contact, which option would Loki choose?_

_If the plot hadn't demanded she not, America likely would have stomped on the yeerk as soon as it vacated Serrure's head. This group of Young Avengers are less averse to killing enemies than the canon, superhero version. They're alone, fighting a guerrilla war against body-snatching aliens. They can't afford to have much mercy._

_Serrure is going to be pissed when he wakes up._


	2. Saving the world is not always a choice

_**Warnings**__: discussion of abusive relationships. That is the context that Billy is using to try to understand what Loki 645 did to Serrure. It's not exactly right but it's as close as he's going to get without bringing aliens into it._

_Warnings for teenagers making bad decisions, even with all of this information._

"Hey mom?" I ask, trying for casual but only reaching 'nervous and squeaky'.

"Yes Billy?" she responds. She looks up for a moment from her pile of bills and books for a moment to show me she's listening. Mom does things like that, and makes sure I know what they mean. It's hokey and cheesy and little bit weird, but I do appreciate it.

"How do you- what do you do if one of your…friends…. Hurt another one?" It's not quite right to call Loki 645 a friend, after what ze's done, but what else do you call someone who played cards with you, ate in shitty diners, kept your secrets and fought an interstellar war by your side? How do I reconcile the things Loki has done for me with the things ze has done to Serrure?

I mean, that's why I'm coming to mom. It's not like she always has all the answers, but she's a psychologist, and she tends to have good advice for stuff like this. She's upfront about it when she doesn't know, too.

Mom puts down her reading glasses and gives me her full attention. "Hurt how?" she asks sternly, probably thinking Kate's hit Tommy with an arrow again.

I scramble to translate 'yeerk infestation' into normal human terms. How to get across what Loki did? How ze took control of Serrure's life and left him living in fear even when he wasn't a passive observer of his own life?

"Like… an abusive relationship," I explain, having an epiphany. Maybe I don't have to ask mom after all. There's got to be books and articles and Youtube videos about this, right?

"That's a serious matter," my mom says, but it isn't a reprimand or a brush-off; it's a sign she's taking this seriously. "As a friend, you need to offer the victim help: a safer place, privacy, resources. But you can't force them to leave. If you need to give someone my number-" I make a face, and she stops there.

"What about the… other person?" I ask, trying to look unaffected. What do I do about Loki 645?

"You can't help the abuser and support the victim at the same time. Not even professional therapists can do that. I know they're your friend, but what they've done is wrong."

"It's not that, Mom," I say, wincing. Why did I think she could leave this alone. "It's just- It's just a TV show. Teddy and I were watching Degrassi, and we were arguing about what the characters should do."

Mom gives me a look like she's still suspicious, but doesn't call me out on the lie.

"So you just drop the… abuser…. to protect the victim?"

"In the best case scenario, someone else will pick up the slack to help rehabilitate the abuser, but yes. It's terribly important for the victim's friends to stand by them and not 'refuse to take sides' or side with the abuser."

"What if you can't cut ties?" I wonder. It's really either work together with Loki 645 or let zir die. There is no other option. Now that I've worked with zir, now that I know that ze's a person (a sarcastic, petty, guilty person), can I let zir die of slow starvation?

"If Tommy did something, you can tell me," mom urges. I roll my eyes. My mom- my foster mom, technically- doesn't really approve of my twin brother. She tries to hide it, because she knows we're close and she respects our familial relationship or whatever, but despite her best efforts she still tends to think the worst of him.

"Tommy didn't do anything," I reiterate. "It's in Degrassi. But like, if a sibling abused your friend. What do you do? You can't just cut them off. They're family." Loki 645 isn't my family, but I can't- is ze an Animorph? How much of that was real?

Mom is silent for a minute. "That's a tough situation, Billy. If you were close with the victim it will feel like a betrayal no matter what you do. There are some things, though: never excuse the abuser's behavior. Don't invite the victim to a place you know the abuser will be. Actually address the abuse instead of letting it slide with your … sibling. If you can, get professional help." Mom's giving me this calculating look, so I figure it's time to leave.

"Ok. Thanks mom, I'll be sure to tell Teddy." I smile, but Mom fixes me with that same look until I leave the room.

I try to translate Mom's advice into aliens and brain-sharing.

Loki's back in the jar of course, awaiting our final decision of what to do with zir. I have my brain to myself.

Is Loki 645 part of the team? Could we keep zir around without hurting Serrure even more? If we were partners again, Loki 645 would be around all the time, any time I was there. Would Serrure be forced to leave the Animorphs to get away from zir?

If we don't keep Loki around, can I bear to let zir die?

If we find something else to do with zir, can I survive being alone in my head? Joining with the yeerk was stupid and dangerous and could have ruined everything, but if ze wasn't there, would I have done something even worse in my desperation?

I think about the list written in blue ink on the side of my desk, and wonder.

There isn't a manual for this, or a walkthrough, or even an article on Wikihow. We are utterly alone, utterly unprecedented, utterly confused.

The next day we gather in the Warehouse again, because somehow we've only gained more problems since trying to solve the last one.

Serrure and Cassie sit together on the ratty old couch Tommy picked up off the side of the road last month. They sit stiffly, and it looks unnatural, because Serrure is always lounging or perching, never looking this uncomfortable.

"So what are we doing with the slug," Eli announces to the room. It isn't a question, it's more of an introduction to the topic.

"Nothing?" Tommy suggests. "It'll die by tomorrow anyway." I wince at my brother's coldness, and Serrure's shoulders move as well, as if he agrees.

"What _can_ we do?" my boyfriend asks. "It's not like we have a portable yeerk pool hanging around."

I know what we could do. It's not like it didn't cross our my our mind while Loki 645 was in my head. That's the thing with sharing headspace: you don't have to ask or decide to speak to your… guest. All I did was think too loud about how we could save Loki, and ze sent back a plan. If I wanted to, I could save Loki. If I wanted to, I could morph Serrure every three days so he could 'put in an appearance' at the yeerk pool. With one plan, I could save both of the people I thought were my friend. All I have to do is become a yeerk host.

All I have to do is not be alone in my head.

"What are we doing about Serrure?" I ask. My voice comes out deep and gravely, and I cough a bit to clear my throat. My team turns toward me. They aren't seeing the problem. "Are Teddy and Eli going to impersonate him every three days to the yeerk pool?"

"Billy's right. We only bought him a bit of time," Noh-Varr agrees.

"So what do we do," Kate looks at each of us, but her eyes stop on Serrure. "What do you want to do?"

"I don't know," he says, pulling his knees up to his chest. "I don't want to go back there. I don't want Loki to die. I don't want Don to be taken because of me."

Eli and Kate trade looks, like they're the adults in the room and we're all children who don't understand the severity of the situation. They may be older than the rest of us (bar Noh-Varr), but they're only 17. They aren't adults. They don't have all the answers, either.

But this time, maybe I do.

"I have an idea."

Maybe my breakdown last night killed any credibility I had, or maybe America sees something in my eyes, because she immediately shuts me down.

"_No_," she says. "The yeerk and you are staying three feet apart at all times, chico."

I can't let that be the end. I have to at least try. "Teddy can teach me to morph human," I explain. "I can be Loki 645's host. We can work _together_. We can pretend ze's still in Serrure, so nothing has to change on his end. All he'll have to do is pretend to be a host at school." I look to Serrure, because no matter what the others say, this is his decision. It's his life. Like my mom said, we have to stand behind him and let him have control of his life again.

"I don't want zir back," Serrure says, which is obvious. "I don't want to talk to zir or look at zir or work with zir. I just want my life back. You can do whatever you want-" his voice has been getting more and more bitter, and at some point he must have reached a point where it got too much, because he interrupts himself. "Don't trust zir. Ze tried to be nice, sometimes. Ze tried to give me advice, or help out. But ze just didn't get it that ze's a yeerk. Ze was controlling my life against my will. You know how guilty ze feels, right?"

I nod. Serrure has told us a lot about the things he learned while he was a host, but before now he's never talked about what it felt like. I had Loki 645 in my head for an hour and a half, but I never experienced the full control that Serrure went through. It's so weird to think about it, but I realize I don't really know this boy who forced a yeerk to empathize with him, the boy who inspired such guilt that Loki 645 voluntarily gave zirself up to us, the sworn enemies of the Yeerk Empire.

"Ze does feel guilty", Serrure continues, "It overwhelmed zir and that's why ze finally told you all what's going on. But remember: ze felt guilty, but ze _still did it_."

Serrure's right, and I know I should listen to him, but the plan Loki gave me is still the best one we have.

"I know," I tell him.

The team isn't happy, but they recognize that we have few alternatives. It should bother me more that Loki 645 has so much influence on our decision, even while floating, unaware, in the jar.

"It comes out of your head for team meetings," America demands. "One of us makes sure it's out, and you give a report. The first time it takes control or does anything suspicious, it's getting curb-stomped and we'll figure out a new plan."

"Don't bring it in here, either. Drop it back in its jar before you see Serrure. Let it know that's the deal: absolutely no contact with Serrure, no taking control. As far as we're concerned, it's on probation," Eli continues, laying down the ground rules. No one suggests we get Loki 645 out to ask zir to agree to the terms. It's pretty much this or death.

We're just kids. We don't have resources or allies or fallbacks. We can't keep Loki alive without using a host, and I'm the only volunteer.

What am I thinking? Why am I doing this? Am I a terrible friend? Am I a failure as a person, to actually _want_ another being inside of my head?

The meeting doesn't pause for my insecurities. The others have moved on to the other issues facing our team: the fate of Serrure and the girl they rescued last night.

"You're both kids. Even more than the rest of us. You're only freshmen and no one ever asked you if you wanted to be a part of this. Cassie, you can't morph like we can, but if you want to help out we always need another set of eyes. Serrure," Kate paused, catching the eye of her young teammate. "I don't know how willing your participation was. If it was the yeerk who agreed to be an Animorph, that decision doesn't bind you, ok? You can walk away from this if you want to-"

Eli snorts, clearly disagreeing, and I see his point. You don't just walk away when the fate of your world hangs in the balance. You don't walk away from the only other people who know what's really going on. Still, it's nice of Kate to offer.

"I'm in," Cassie says immediately. "Whatever I can do. I want to help." Her hands are clenched at her sides, digging into the couch cushions. There's gotta be something she can help with. Noh-Varr can't morph either, after all, and he's incredibly useful.

"I'm out," Serrure says, eyes downcast. "I'm not the person you thought I was, and I can't pretend to be."

"We don't expect you to be the same person," Teddy reassures him, but Serrure only shakes his head.

"I can't be here. Not- not with you. Especially if the yeerk is going to be around, I just- I can't. It's better this way."

"I won't host zir, then!" I say desperately. I don't want to be in that position again. I don't want to be hopeless and alone, but Serrure must have felt that way for the last eight months, and he deserves better. He deserves not to be chased off the team.

"It's my decision," he says viciously. "No one's going to take it from me."

And with that, our team changed forever.

-Serrure's conversations with Don

-Billy and Loki learning to work together (Billy's mom is like 'Billy there's nothing like that in Degrassi, I looked it up', and Billy has no idea what to do but loki is A+ at lying so ze's imidiately awkward and says "ok so… have you heard of fanfiction?")

-Serrure and Cassie at school

- Serrure deciding to come back

-the dance of Loki avoiding Serrure

-Serrure confronting Loki (and, consequently, Billy.)

-Teddy and Billy: how is their relationship affected?

-Mother is Subvisser 7. She and Loki used to work together? They were scheming against Visser 3, the current leader of the invasion force. He's…. ummm. Ultron? Red Skull? Idk.

-Don is in danger? Loki is like 'we need to save him holy shit' ends up doing something stupid and dangerous because Loki has FEELINGS about Serrure's family. Yeerks don't have family, you know


	3. The Sharing

_**Note: **__Some scenes are third person, when the focus is Serrure. All other scenes are first person, from Billy's POV, like in the Animorphs books._

Serrure drums his fingers against his thigh, the pressure and rhythm distracting him from the droning of his Government teacher.

Aliens are taking over the world, and they expect him to learn about the War of 1812.

Serrure hasn't been bored in months, and he isn't sure he can be happy about that. Before, Loki 645 would have distracted him with puns or a running commentary on his teacher's wardrobe. Now, Serrure is finally alone in his head.

It's a good thing. It's a wonderful thing.

Serrure just didn't expect to miss the company.

He turns his head to look over his shoulder. There's Cassie's seat, but of course it's empty now. The principal announced her disappearance over the morning announcements, and encouraged anyone with any information about her whereabouts to come to the front office to speak to the police. Of course none of the eight people who _actually_ know where she is would ever fall for that.

Serrure remembers seeing the drawn, tear-streaked faces of her mother and step-father. He wonders whether the grief is real, or faked by yeerks dwelling inside their skulls. He wonders if Loki 645 would have grieved like that if Don disappeared. Ze had been starting to warm up to him by the end of-

Serrure shakes his head. The yeerk is gone, and good riddance.

"Serrure?" The teacher asks, pronouncing it in the guttural, American way rather than the French. "Did you have a question?"

"No m'am," he answers. He lowers his head and pretends to take notes.

It's my second full day with the yeerk riding along in my head, and everything's been going fine. Even the trip to the yeerk pool went off without a hitch, although I think I can still hear the screams when I close my eyes.

I tell myself that spending all that time down there will help me to memorize their defenses, that one day it will lead to us freeing all of the hosts kept in cages.

I tell myself a lot of things.

Right now I'm telling myself that I should really have done my math homework, because it doesn't look like Mrs. H will be buying any of my excuses this time. The tall, broad woman stands at the front of the classroom and tells us all to pass the homework forward. Even though I know I haven't done it, I dig in my backpack for the crumpled, empty worksheet in the vain hope that some of it will be filled in.

I spread it onto my desk, trying to flatten out the wrinkles at the very least. All it has written on it is my name. I am so screwed.

But-

My right hand darts out and takes up a pencil. It flashes across the page, filling in numbers and symbols almost as fast as my eyes can follow.

"Billy!" Mrs. H says sternly. "If you have not finished the assignment, that is your own fault. Pass forward whatever you have completed."

I force the hand to stop writing, and pass the paper to the girl who sits in front of me, who then adds it to her own and passes it on.

'_What were you doing_?' I demand to the yeerk in my head.

'_Helping_,' Loki 645 answers easily, with the mental equivalent of a shrug. '_I only made it to problem 6, but-'_

'_You can't just do that without asking_.' My heart hammers in my chest. Maybe this was a terrible idea. If Loki can't even let go of control for two school days, how will we learn to work together for the foreseeable future?

'_Very well_,' Loki 645 agrees, clearly only humoring me, '_Next time I'll let you fail._'

'_This is my body, Loki_,' I remind zir. '_You're a passenger, not a copilot_.'

The wave of emotion I feel from Loki makes it clear ze doesn't agree.

'_It's incredibly hard to sit back and watch when your adrenal glands are acting up so much. If I wasn't familiar with human school from S- from my last host, I'd think it was an elaborate series of tortures_.'

'_You can help when I ask for it_,' I repeat. '_Nothing else_.'

'_Fine_.'

Maybe Loki would have said something else, some sarcastic comment or backhanded piece of advice, but then Mrs. H walks to the door and lets in a group of seniors- kids in Kate's grade.

"Is it Homecoming season already?" Greg mutters next to me. I ignore him, because he's an asshole.

"Class, your fellow students have taken time out of their own busy days to speak to you about the recent tragedy. I expect you to be on your best behavior."

We all chorus "Yes, Mrs. H," as unenthusiastically as we can get away with. Sometimes I suspect Mrs. H thinks we're kindergarten students instead of high school sophomores.

'_You know, the yeerks approve of your school system,' _Loki 645 mentions offhand_, 'it does very well at preparing you all to take orders.'_

I'm not sure whether to laugh at that. It seems safer not to encourage Loki.

"Hi, I'm Lucy, and we represent the Sharing," the leader of the seniors tells us, "We're a recreational and social group on campus. I'm sure you know that we lost one of our own recently: Cassie went missing two days ago. She was a part of the Sharing, but she was also a member of the school, and we at the Sharing wanted to reach out and offer our support to her friends and classmates during this rough time. We're offering grief counseling down at the rec center, but some people just need a distraction or a reason to keep active. Everyone is always welcome at the Sharing."

Lucy's fellow members echo her bright sunny smile, and I wonder if it looks creepy to anyone else. Maybe it's just me, because I know that the Sharing is a front for yeerk activity, and that every 'full' member has a slug lurking behind their eyes-

'_Her yeerk is called Amora 529_.'

-just like I do, actually.

I look away from Lucy and feel a bit sick. Of course the Sharing will be taking advantage of Cassie's 'disappearance'. I bet they're hoping to sniff out where she's hiding, too.

'_It's very likely_,' Loki 645 agrees.

'_We have to tell the team_.'

That night, Segurre sits at the kitchen table, homework spread out in front of him.

He scrawls a few numbers down, then erased them again. He probably should have paid more attention in math class these last few months, but nothing really felt like it mattered, at the time. How do you bring yourself to care about polynomials when your life is being controlled by an alien? How do you learn when you're scared all the time?

It doesn't _matter_, not really, not when the Earth might be under yeerk control by this time next year, but what if this is the thing that catches their attention? What if the math teacher is controlled by a yeerk? What if the principal notices Serrure's math grade slipping and wonders why Loki 645 has allowed Serrure to fail? What if they find out he's free?

Serrure puts the pencil down and takes a deep breath.

"Hey."

Serrure looks up. Don stands in front of him, leaning against the table for balance. He's smiling, and his blond hair is pulled back in a ponytail, which means he's probably just come back from classes himself.

"What's up?" his brother asks. "Anything I can do to help?"

Serrure shakes his head sadly, because while once he thought Don could do anything, he now knows better.

Don isn't fooled, and carefully lowers himself down into a chair. Don's left knee got crushed in a car accident years ago, and it will never have the mobility it once had. He uses a cane sometimes, but doesn't bother with it when he's at home.

Serrure has a thought.

"Actually…"

"Yeah, kid?" Don looks him straight in the eye, like he isn't just a scrawny 14-year old, like he's an equal, someone who matters.

"What do you do if you know something terrible is happening, and you're not strong enough to stop it?" Serrure knows that even this might be too much to tell Don, but what else is he supposed to do? Who else can he go to who won't want something from him?

Don leans back in his chair, giving Serrure's question the thought it deserves.

"That's a hard one. I guess… you accept that one person can't change the world alone, and do as much as you can anyway. Maybe you can't stop this terrible thing from happening, but maybe you don't have to do it alone?" Don raises his eyebrows at his little brother, and Serrure knows it's an opening to ask for Don's help. He can't know. He can't be closer to this than he already is. Serrure is pretty sure that Don isn't a yeerk host- Loki 645 would have been informed if there was another ally so close by. But if Don makes the wrong move or falls in with the wrong crowd, he could be infested any day.

"Thanks Don," Serrure says instead, smiling up at his brother as if nothing's wrong. As if hundreds of people aren't living out his personal hell as they speak.

"Not a problem."

I kept thinking about the Sharing and Cassie for the rest of the day. About how she's stuck living with Noh-Varr now, about how we can't even afford to get word to her parents that she's safe. They're probably already infested, now. (Was it even worth it?)

I don't want to let this go. I don't want to stand back and watch the yeerks take control of whatever is left of her life here.

'_What else can we do?_' Loki 645 asks curiously, but all I have are a bunch of disconnected ideas, not a solid plan. I send those thoughts to Loki anyway.

Ze sends back surprise and a quiet thoughtfulness.

'_Got a better idea?_' I ask zir.

'_No_,' Loki 645 admits, '_But I think I can supply some structure to yours._'

The seniors get out of school half an hour before we do, so I don't manage to grab Kate and Eli before they go home for the day. Instead, I catch Teddy's eye and pull him into the supply closet next to the nurse's office right after the last bell rings.

"I want to sabotage the Sharing's recruitment meeting tonight."

"Why do I get the feeling you haven't told the others?" Teddy asks.

"Probably because I haven't."

"Wonderful. Ok. At least let me grab America and Tommy before they go home-"

He ducks out into the hallway before I can tell him the rest of the plan, or suggest a better meeting place. Great. Because four teenagers hiding out in a closet isn't suspicious or anything.

'_If we get caught, I have several excuses that sound much more believable than 'secretly fighting a guerilla war against aliens'_,' Loki 645 offers. I catch the gist of one of them floating around in my head, and I decide I don't want to know the rest.

_We're in position,_ America reports several hours later. Her voice is loud and clear in my head, despite her body being twenty feet away and currently the size and shape of a cockroach. In my nervousness I almost glance toward her hiding place, but Loki 645 grabs control for the split-second it takes to stop me.

_Those brownies smell _awesome, my brother interjects. _Hey Billy, snag one for me. Or- wait, would the yeerks poison the food? No one's that evil, are they?_ The technology that allows Tommy to speak in our minds while he's in the body of an insect actually makes his speech _more_ intelligible than it usually is. I'm not sure it's actually possible to slur words telepathically.

Beside me, Teddy continues his conversation without pause.

There are about twenty-five kids at the Sharing info meeting, besides me and Teddy. Most of them are from Cassie's grade, but there are a few older kids scattered around, and also a few who I think are still in middle school. I shiver at the thought of someone so young becoming infested.

Teddy puts his arm around my shoulders, disguising my disgust as cold.

"Thank you all so much for coming," Lucy announces once the brownies are gone. "The Sharing is an open, supportive place where people from all walks of life can come together and live life to the fullest." I wonder if the infomercial-ness is a yeerk thing or a cult thing. "There are no obligations here tonight, we just wanted to give you all an opportunity to see what we're about here at the Sharing and allow you to decide whether we could be right for you." She smiles, all teeth.

'_That yeerk is terrible at motivational speeches_,' Loki 645 complains. _'I could do so much better than that_.'

I imagine what would have happened if Serrure had invited the team to the Sharing before we found out it was a yeerk front. Loki 645 could have lured us into an ambush at any time.

"Our volunteers are passing out slips of paper," Lucy continues, undaunted. "It's a little game to help you get to know each other. Each square has a hobby or a characteristic written in it. Go around the room and talk to each other to find someone who fits into each box!" She hands a stack of unevenly-cut yellow construction paper to a group of seniors in green shirts.

A brunette I vaguely recognize from last year's Earth Science class smiles blandly at me and hands me a piece of paper and a cheap plastic pen- the kind you get at the dollar store in packs of 12.

I glance down at the words reflexively, despite the fact that no one will get the chance to finish the activity if everything goes as planned.

'_Looking for the 'symbiotic yeerk host' square?_' Loki 645 asks. _'I think you'll be disappointed_.'

'_That would be incredibly honest of them, if there was_,' I respond, my eyes skimming over 'born outside the country', 'has an older sister', 'plays a sport', 'has green eyes', 'knows all the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody', and 'favorite color is yellow'.

"Who writes this shit?" Teddy whispers to me, apparently reading over his own paper.

_Oooh, someone dropped a brownie_! my brother's voice announces in my head. _Mine_! I'm not sure whether that's Tommy's usual impulsiveness speaking, or if the cockroach's instincts have gotten the better of him.

_Don't you fucking dare, Tommy. STAY IN POSITION UNTIL THEY SIGNAL US_! America yells back via thought-speech.

Teddy and I share an uneasy glance, but we can't respond telepathically while we aren't in morph. Teddy tried to explain to me once why he can't use thought-speech in human form, but to be honest we had just started dating and I was much more interested in staring at his mouth. Whoops.

'_How you guys managed to avoid detection for so long, I'll never know_,' Loki 645 sighs.

I ignore my yeerk's running commentary and refocus my mind on the mission. We're here to gauge how popular the Sharing is getting with the freshman class, how enthusiastic any of these kids are about joining. If they're just here for free food, we won't have to do much to dissuade them from coming back- America and Tommy running around the snack table as cockroaches will ensure that no one is tempted to come back to the Sharing for the free dessert.

On the other hand, if they're actually buying the whole 'unconditional acceptance, brotherhood of peoples' shtick, even a couple bugs won't keep them out of yeerk hands for long.

Teddy gives me one last squeeze on the arm, then wanders off to socialize. My gaze scans the crowded room, looking for someone who isn't already engaged in conversation.

I wander around the perimeter, and eventually end up at the snack table where a short girl in a knit hat is talking to- Serrure.

Shit.

Before I can sneak away (and how suspicious would that look, to the yeerk-controlled volunteers?), Serrure spots me.

He doesn't say anything, but his expression freezes. I can't read his face like I used to- when Loki 645 was in control, I got to know what every eyebrow twitch and every turn of the lip meant, but Serrure's face is different now.

'_What do I do?_' I ask Loki 645 frantically. Someone is going to notice this. Someone will notice that we aren't even supposed to know each other but we're freaking out and someone will question Serrure and figure out he doesn't have a yeerk and then-

'_Fuck_-' Loki curses, and takes control.

Our expression evens out into one of manufactured sympathy.

"Hi," my voice says to my former teammate. "You're Serrure, right? Were you a friend of Cassie's?"

Loki 645 holds out my hand to Serrure, who considers it as one might consider a rotting fish.

"_Are_," the girl Serrure is with corrects. "She's missing, not dead. We _are_ her friends."

"Right, sorry," Loki replies in chagrin, withdrawing our hand. "I didn't catch your name."

"Molly." The girl is frowning at us, and I wonder if she's infested like Cassie and Serrure were.

'_Probably not_,' Loki answers, unasked. '_I don't remember her, and if you hadn't noticed, all of the Controllers are putting on their Friendly Faces today. This girl looks like she wants to shank you._'

'_Controllers_?'

'_Yeerks controlling their hosts: Controllers_,' Loki clarifies.

'_Oh_.'

"Hey, so do you have any of these boxes, or…?" I ask awkwardly, brandishing the paper. Molly scoffs and rolls her eyes, but reached out for the paper. As soon as I hand it to her, she begins folding it into a paper airplane.

Well, that's one person who isn't impressed with the Sharing's pitch.

Molly, Serrure and I manage to make a pretty efficient assembly line of paper airplanes, even with me and Serrure ignoring each other's existence. Molly takes this in stride, and provides a running commentary on the best way to fold paper airplanes for various uses.

"-if you want it to fly a long way in a straight line, but if you want it to fly around the corner and hit someone, you can fold it like _this_," Molly explains, taking another Sharing leaflet from the pile on the counter to demonstrate her technique.

I keep an ear open to the conversations happening around us, but it mostly has nothing to do with the Sharing itself. A couple of kids in the corner are talking about what Sean did to get detention last week, the girls next to us are trying to remember Cassie's last name, and I think there's a couple behind me who are making out, from the muffled noises I hear.

A hand settles on my shoulder, and I jump before Teddy's voice reassures me as to the hand's owner.

"A found a couple lonely freshmen, but most of these kids are here for the food, I think," Teddy whispers into my ear.

I nod and smile at him as if he's said something sweet.

"Yeah, me too."

Teddy gives me a questioning look, so I take it as my cue.

"Do you think they have any cookies left?" I ask him, in what I hope sounds like a hopeful voice.

Serrure gives me an odd look and glances over the snack table, well picked-over by hungry students.

"Maybe you could ask one of the volunteers," Teddy suggest helpfully, ignoring the obvious lack of food.

I turn and survey the room, making sure to note where the volunteers in neon t-shirts are. I lock eyes with one boy about my age and walk toward him. As I clear the snack table I swing my foot a little too wide and 'accidentally' kick the leg so that the whole table bounces a bit.

_That's our cue_! Tommy announces joyously.

_About damn time_, America agrees.

Cockroaches don't have great hearing, but they feel vibrations just fine.

Molly, the girl with the paper airplanes, screams in disgust as two American Cockroaches scuttle across the snack table, climbing over empty foil trays in search of crumbs.

'_It is an intrinsically human reaction to gather and watch when someone screams_,' Loki notes as a group of students crowd the table to see what it was that horrifies Molly so. A chorus of moans and squeals rises as one roach darts out of a bag of potato chips and into the box of plastic spoons.

One brave soul tries to make it through the crowd, brandishing a shoe, and I figure that we'd better arrange for the getaway before we find out if Tommy and America can survive as much as real roaches can.

"I'll kill them!" Teddy yells into the crowd before lunging at the table, missing a roach by several inches. He's just slamming his fists on the surface, but it looks and sounds very impressive, even if I'm sure he's being careful not to actually hit anything.

One roach darts behind a bottle of Pepsi. Teddy places one hand flat on the table next to the bottle to steady himself while the other smashes down near the chips.

It's simple slight of hand: direct attention with one hand, while the other-

A cockroach scurries from behind the soda bottle and into Teddy's long sleeve. I am, I hope, the only person looking.

'_See, this is much better!' _Loki 645 crows_, 'subtlety, plausible deniability, I like this plan.'_

'_This was your plan,' _I remind zir.

'_You don't say._'

Kate and Eli are annoyed the next day when we fill them in on what they missed, but they agree that we need to be able to take opportunities as they come, not always wait for the whole group.

"You could have called," Eli points out.

Teddy mimes picking up a phone. "Oh, hi Eli's grandma. Can you put Eli on the phone? No, we just wanted his opinion of our plan to infiltrate an alien youth group meeting. He's busy, you say? I'll wait."

"What we need is a code," Tommy decides.

"This is going to be really stupid, I can already tell," America groans.

My team is snarking at each other, Cassie's parents are probably infested, and we're no closer to actually freeing more hosts or sending the yeerk packing. Still, it's not all bad. Serrure's in the clear with the Sharing, the freshman class are already spreading horror stories about last night's Sharing meeting, and we stopped another yeerk plan with zero casualties.

For a team of teenagers fighting against an alien invasion, I think we're doing pretty well.


	4. The Yeerk Peace Movement

_**Note: **__Some scenes are third person, when the focus is Serrure. All other scenes are first person, from Billy's POV, like in the Animorphs books._

"How'd it go?"

"How'd what go?" Serrure asks, trying to angle his head so that he can see his brother's face. Unfortunately, sitting upside-down on a couch is not a great position for visibility.

"Saving the world," Don's voice is amused and light-hearted. Serrure wonders how different his tone would be if he knew what was really going on.

"Pretty well," he hedges, thinking it over. "You were right about getting help."

Don steps into Serrure's line of sight and pats his brother's knee.

"When will you learn that I'm always right?"

"Serrure, right?"

When two upperclassmen block his way to third period, Serrure begins to suspect that he is in trouble. When he distantly recognizes Nathanial from the Sharing, his blood runs cold. His first instinct is to run, and his second is to find his team, but both reactions would only get him in more trouble, and drag the Animorphs down with him.

"Yeah, can I help you?" he asks instead, with a smile. "I'm about to be late to Chem, can we talk later?"

"Of course," Nathanial's yeerk replies, trying to smile but looking tense. It doesn't reassure Serrure. "I have the second lunch slot, are you free then?"

"No, sorry," Serrure fakes apology. "Mine is the first slot." If he can stall them, he can warn the team, maybe morph something small and get away before anyone notices he's gone?

"So do I!" Nathanial's friend replies. She's a tall blonde in Billy's grade- Karolina something. "We'll talk then."

"So long, Serrure," Nathanial bids him. Their eyes meet, and the Controller's smile becomes a shade more genuine. He knows something.

"See you at lunch!" Karolina bids him.

Serrure walks slowly to Chemistry, and steps in the door several seconds after the late bell.

Is Karolina infested, too? Do they know Serrure is free of his yeerk?

It should be unsettling how quickly Loki 645 settled into my life. I can recognize that as a fact without feeling it.

Like this morning, mom made me breakfast before school. I knew something was definitely up, because usually I just grab cereal and watch stupid cartoons. Still, it's not like I could've gone back to bed or avoided her, so I sat down anyway and ate the damn eggs.

She gave me this sad, understanding look and said "Billy, I know there isn't an abuse plotline in Degrassi," like she had found out some great secret and was sorry she had to confront me about it.

And I haven't thought about that since last week, you know? I almost forgot about making that up. I didn't know what to do, or what to say to convince her it was nothing.

Loki did, though.

Ze took control and twisted the stance of my body just a few degrees, until every action read 'embarassed' instead of 'uneasy'. Ze made my face blush - I didn't realize yeerks could do that, but I guess that's how they're so effective at pretending to be us.

Ze stammered out, "Ok, so… have you heard of fanfiction?" and with one sentence transformed an intervention into an embarrassing confession about internet habits.

I'm kind of scared at how relieved it made me. It was so easy to sit back and let Loki handle things. What if I start to do that with my whole life? What if Loki 645 takes over not because ze starts forcing zir way into my life, but because I let zir?

"Her Serrure!" Karolina calls. She sets her tray down at his table and sits across from him. Serrure regrets that their table is empty, that no one is there to interrupt or suggest that Karolina sit somewhere else. Maybe if Serrure hadn't sabotaged his friendship with Leah… but no, he did the right thing to send her away. Loki's guilt didn't come until several weeks into his infestation. There's no telling what could have happened to Leah in that time.

"Hi," Serrure answers. He has a lot of practice being civil and pretending everything is fine. "What's up, Karolina?"

"You haven't been as active in Sharing recruitment recently," she says casually, not yet touching her lunch.

Serrure's breath catches, but he remains outwardly calm. "I went to a recruitment event just the other night."

Karolina smiles, a close-mouthed expression that reaches her eyes and makes them sparkle. "You spent the whole night talking to a twelve-year-old."

"She's a hard sell," Serrure says seriously.

Karolina tosses her long hair over her shoulder, using the gesture as an excuse to glance around, as if to make sure they are not overheard.

The yeerks wouldn't do much at school, right? They couldn't kill him here. If they wanted to lure him into a trap, it wouldn't be out in the open like this, right?

"You aren't a Controller," Karolina observes.

Serrure's blood runs cold.

Too much time passes, and the yeerk behind Karolina's eyes twists her lips once more into that knowing smile.

"We're in public," Serrure reminds her, desperate to stall for time.

"You're a symbiote," Karolina continues, undaunted. "Like me and Xavin 216."

That… is not how the conversation was supposed to go. Was it?

"What?" Serrure breathes. His mind can't grok what she's saying. His heart is still hammering in his chest, and he got so keyed up waiting for her to accuse him of being an escapee that he's not sure how to react to anything else.

"We've been watching you for months. You act different at school and at the Sharing, even when you're interacting with new members. That's how we knew Loki 645 isn't in control during the day. Ze isn't controlling you; you're working together!" Karolina concludes triumphantly. She says those last three words a bit too loudly, but they're relatively innocuous, so no one around them bats an eye.

Months. He was being watched by yeerks for _months_. Serrure was right to be afraid of discovery, people _were_ watching him, waiting for him to make a wrong move and- and-

He's only been free for a week. It was Loki's leniency, zir guilt they saw, not Serrure's freedom.

They don't know the truth. Serrure can still make it out of this.

"Months?" Serrure echoes.

"We weren't sure what we were seeing," Karolina (or her yeerk?) admits. "But now, with Cassie's disappearance…" Karolina flips her hair again, checking the room for eavesdroppers. "You know where she is. You helped her escape."

"What do you want?" Serrure asks. He doesn't deny or confirm Karolina's accusations. Loki 645 taught him a lot of things, among them this: When bluffing, the less info you give the other person, the more assumptions they'll make. The more they'll reveal to you.

"To help each other. We want you to join the Yeerk Peace Movement."

"I don't like this."

"What, the secret invasion of the Earth by brain-snatching aliens?"

"_No_, Tommy-" Eli spits back, "I mean, _yes_, but I mean- Loki."

"I don't think any of us _like_ the yeerk," America says, "But we decided, right? Ze helps Billy."

"I don't like it,' Eli repeats. "A couple thousand of these slugs invade the city, and the one in our teammate's head happens to be the one who grows a conscience? How likely is that? Why not Cassie's yeerk? Or David's? Or the yeerks in America's moms or Principal Coulson or anyone else at all?"

"It does seem convenient," Kate agrees.

"Suspicious is more like it."

They're making good points. It does seem far-fetched that this one yeerk should 'see the light' and renounce the species' world-conquering ways just from meeting a human kid. It's awfully convenient that it happens to be _this_ yeerk. But then again, how could it be a lie? If Loki 645 wasn't on our side, wouldn't we be all infested by now? Wouldn't we at least be on the run, and down one teammate?

I lean back against Teddy and stay silent. I'm too close to the situation, every argument that runs through my head is tainted by the guilt I felt from Loki and the relief I get from zir presence in my mind. I Can't be objective about this-

But really, who among us can?

"I hope I'm not interrupting."

For one strange minute, I imagine that Loki 645 has walked into the room to hear us argue about zir sincerity. That's the voice ze spoke with for so long, after all, that's zir wry smile and self-effacing tone.

It can't be Loki. Loki is in a jar hidden under my desk at home, as per our agreement with Serrure. His departure from the team didn't change that.

So that means- this is Serrure. _Just_ Serrure.

Huh. I guess there's more of him in Loki than I thought.

"Hey," Cassie says. Her voice sounds excited, like her best friend just walked in the door, even though I don't think she and Serrure were ever close at school. It makes sense though, the more I think about it. It's not like any of us understand what they went through.

Not even me.

"You back?" Tommy asks. He takes a step toward Serrure, like he's going to go in for a hug or something, but he stops himself almost immediately. Tommy's not the hugging type. I guess he really must've missed him.

Serrure twists his mouth to one side and scrunches his face, like he's thinking about something mildly distasteful. It's a very _Serrure_ expression, and not _Loki_ at all. Eli and Noh-Varr finally relax.

"I was contacted by a couple of yeerks at the school. They say they're part of an underground resistance. A Yeerk Peace Movement."

Cassie's face darkens, and the rest of us glance at each other in confusion. My stomach leaps. If there are others- If other yeerks can change, that means Loki could be telling the truth. Loki could really want to help us.

"So they're like us, but within the Yeerk Empire?" Noh-Varr says, not so much asking as testing out the idea on his tongue.

Serrure shrugs. "I don't think they've gone out on missions or sabotaged anything yet, but the intent's there."

"Well that's awfully nice of them," Tommy sneers, "What do they do, sit around telling each other how terrible those _other_ yeerks are?"

"Why did they know to come to you?" Eli wants to know. He has a good point. Of all the hosts at the school, they happen to find the one who wouldn't rat them out to the yeerk high command? I can only imagine what Visser Three would do to traitors- he already treats his subordinates like cannon fodder.

"Loki 645 slipped up." Serrure shrugs, and this time I do recognize his body language. It's too-casual. He's lying. Why? This is important, this kind of information leak is a danger to Serrure's freedom, and by extension, all of ours. But he can't be a mole, Loki 645 was in his head for months, ze'd have told me if-

And here I go, trusting the yeerk already.

"They don't know about you guys," Serrure reassures us. "As far as they know, the band of guerilla warriors are rebel Skrulls who crashed with Princess Arnelle. They think I'm with Loki. That I'm like them-" Serrure locks eyes with me, and I flinch for the hit I know is coming. "symbiotic." It isn't spat like venom or hissed like a curse, there's no disgust in the word at all. Just a lack of any emotion at all. I know the feeling.

"No offense, Serrure," Eli begins, "But you left. You're not an Animorph anymore. So what do we care about a group of yeerks hiding behind their own guilt from their culpability in the invasion?"

"They have inside information, stuff Loki 645 can't access. There's rumors they're trying to convert a Subvisser to the cause."

"They'd know strategies, plans for expansion. We could attack before they can build new pools, and keep them contained to the area," Noh-Varr realizes.

"All we have to do is work with brain-snatchers," Kate says, contemplative.

I stare at the floor for a minute, not wanting to see which of my friends will glance in my direction.

"We already are." America sounds troubled. She always does these days. I don't think she likes the moral gray area we've set up camp in. She'd do better as a White Hat in a Hollywood movie, where aliens didn't torture children and tear apart families.

Serrure's eyes flash to me, and I try to shake my head. He doesn't look convinced.

"Loki's in the jar," Teddy reassures him. "Like we talked about. No yeerks allowed in the Warehouse, right?" he smiles, and Serrure echoes it, hesitantly. Teddy is kind of perfect like that. I don't think who isn't dead inside can honestly dislike him.

"Does this mean you're back?" Cassie asks. Her voice is quiet as she asks, but somehow it carries across the room, stifling all of the other mumbling and side-comments from the team.

Serrure gazes up at the ceiling, maybe thinking about the past few days, maybe avoiding our eyes. I know which it would be if he was Loki 645, but I'm not sure I know Serrure as well.

"There's a war. I can't hide from it, and I can't pretend it isn't happening. All I can do is the best I can."

That's our battle cry if we ever had one.

We're not professionals. We're not a military group, or superheroes. We aren't even a real team half the time. We're friends (barely).

With great power comes great responsibility, but they don't match up well: we have just enough power to feel responsible, but not nearly enough to win.

We have to try. Some days, we don't know what we're doing, and we don't know where to draw the line, but we're the best change Earth has against the yeerks.

We're surviving.

We're the Animorphs.

_**Note**__: For some reason I got really excited about the idea of Xavin and Karolina as a symbiotic yeerk/human relationship. They're in love. Everyone else thinks this is weird, including the other Yeerk Peace Movement members._

_Vision 002 and Nate have a mutual dislike, but work together anyway (because VISION STOLE HIS LIFE, GET IT?). Nate is really angry and bitter that they couldn't save Cassie from being infested, and now that she's 'missing' he feels even more helpless._


	5. The Kandrona, Part 1: Serrure,

**Part One: Serrure**

_**Note**__: This chapter is told by Serrure rather than Billy. Hope you enjoy the POV switch, because this will be the trend for the next several chapters. You can look forward to Tommy and Eli narrating next._

_Warnings: mention of eugenics. Mention of the Holocaust. Ableist attitudes of the Kree._

_Inspired by Animorphs The Capture and The Stranger_

"I'm in," I announce as I set my lunch down on the table.

Karolina/Xavin 216 jumps, and drops their spoonful of peas back onto their lunch tray. "Serrure!"

"Great," Nathanial/Vision 002 says with a smile. "We're up to a dozen, now."

"Do you always talk about clandestine rebellion movements in the lunch room, or am I just special?" I ask, poking at my slice of greasy public school pizza.

"It's not like anyone's listening," Karolina/Xavin 216 answers, and then her diction changes completely as she continues, "the dull roar of the hum-_students_ talking acts as white noise; it's actually very difficult to overhear us like this."

"So what do you do, anyway? Do we just sit around and feel bad for being yeerks, or-?"

"We're biding our time! We have to develop a sufficient strike team before we can make any strategic moves-" Karolina/Xavin 216 cuts their outburst off mid-sentence, and looks a bit embarrassed about it. I hope it's not as easy to differentiate between yeerk and human in Karolina's everyday life.

Or, no. Wait. Being able to tell yeerk from human is _good_. Ugh, subterfuge is hard.

"The question is: what can you do for the Movement?" Nate/Vision 002 asks. Unlike Karolina/Xavin, they're staring directly at me, not pretending to eat lunch or check out cute classmates.

"I didn't rescue Cassie alone." I let the words hang there in the air, let them accumulate assumptions and questions.

"You're in contact with the Skrull bandits?" Nate/Vision exclaims.

I smile.

"So the question is, what can the Yeerk Peace Movement do for us?"

"What do the yeerks want with a hospital?" Cassie wonders aloud.

"X-ray machines would out them in a minute," Teddy notes. He leans his weight against Billy's shoulder for a moment. They do that a lot: casual touching. Every time we have a meeting, they sit pressed against each other on the couch, or else Teddy stand behind Billy's seat and rests his hands on Billy's shoulders. I guess they're never really alone anymore, not with Loki 645 around. Times like these, when the yeerk is relegated to zir jar, must be the closest they get.

I close my eyes a moment, and banish the thought from my mind.

"You're thinking too small; they could use it as an infestation site. Humans check in, controllers check out," Kate finishes grimly.

"_You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave_-" Tommy sings under his breath.

"That's a hotel, dumbass," Eli corrects.

"So we stop them," America says, pulling us back on track.

"And the yeerks are okay with this?" Billy asks, sounding a bit off-balance. I know how he feels. This is really happening. We're in contact with the yeerk resistance. I'm not helpless anymore, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The Animorphs are no longer flying blind, depending on luck to trip over yeerk plans.

"The Peace Movement knows I'm telling you about this, yeah," I answer. "I assume they know what we'll have to do."

"What do we have to do?" Teddy asks the room at large, "I doubt running around as bugs or crashing through walls in our battle morphs would help much."

"I don't know, maybe we could get it shut down from health code violations?" Kate suggests.

"We want the yeerks out, not the hospital shut down."

"We could at least do some recon?" Billy asks. He looks to Noh-Varr. Noh's one of the oldest of us, and he has the most background knowledge of tactics and yeerks, having been trained in the Kree army.

The Kree warrior nods, thinking. "There must be a reason they are taking over the hospital- we should find out."

We stare at him. He's looking toward the ceiling, which he tends to do when he's deep in thought. Sometimes Noh-Varr's head can be in the clouds, but he's never just completely ignored half of a conversation before.

"Uh. Noh. We do know why they're taking over the hospital: to infest the patients," Kate says it gently, with an edge of wariness.

He just shakes his head. "No, that's not it. You have several billion humans on this planet. The yeerks would never resort to wounded hosts."

"Wounds heal," Eli says impatiently.

"Not without scars. The yeerks are looking for power: status, wealth, prestige. Why would a yeerk want a sub-par host?"

A creeping cold runs down my spine. Noh-Varr's sentence makes sense, of course, but it isn't something any of my other teammates would ever say. It's clinical and calculating, and completely empty of human empathy.

Oddly enough, it isn't something I can imagine Loki 645 saying. It does, however, explain why I was the one infested, instead of my brother. Don is older, charismatic, on his way to a prestigious career in surgery. Plus, anyone who glances at our household knows that he's Father's favorite. The only thing I have that Don doesn't is two fully functioning legs.

Billy looks ill. I'm not staring, I have a habit of glancing at him during these meetings. You know, to find any hint that Loki 645 hasn't been holding up zir end of the deal.

"So the yeerks want rich white able-bodied people, great," Eli snarks. "Sucks to be you, Kate."

"Suck an egg, Eli."

"The yeerks really care that much about disability?" Billy asks Noh-Varr. He looks like he's going to be sick. I wonder if the yeerks would consider Billy a sub-par host. I wonder if Loki tells Billy how much of a _sacrifice_ it is for zir to be paired with a defective host. I wonder.

"This really isn't that complex," Noh-Varr says, looking around in confusion. "It's obvious, isn't it? The best soldiers are those who are physically perfect."

The human members of our group stare at Noh-Varr in growing horror.

I guess I had just accepted it before, but now that I think about it, Noh-Varr's light skin and white hair look like something out of a eugenicist's wet dream.

Now_ I_ feel sick.

"Alright! So the yeerks are gross quasi-Nazis. Awesome. Like we needed another reason to hate them. Moving on," Tommy urges us. I glance toward him. He can't be unaffected by this, right? His foster homes have mostly not been Jewish, but he and Billy are both Jews. Their grandfather was a Holocaust survivor! Even without a personal connection to the genocide, my family taught me the horrors that happen when we try to decide what kind of people are acceptable- did Tommy's guardians really never do the same?

"Noh-Varr-" Teddy begins.

"I don't understand-" he says.

"Humans aren't like that," Cassie says firmly, interrupting everyone else. "There isn't- everyone matters. Everyone." It's more than a little idealistic, but I don't argue, and neither does anyone else.

Noh-Varr considers this. "The Kree are different," he says eventually. "We genetically modify our genome to fit our goals. Each member of the Kree race is designed to be perfect for their function. Mine was- I am a soldier. The yeerks would think similarly." Despite his words, he looks uncertain of the last bit.

"Oh my god, you're the ubermensch."

"Why would a bunch of space slugs be like the Kree?" Teddy thinks to ask.

Noh-Varr doesn't answer, instead looking troubled. He doesn't meet our eyes.

"So. Hospital raid."

We didn't plan the mission terribly well, all things considered.

We didn't want to run the risk of the yeerks discovering our human identities, but none of us felt comfortable morphing other humans except as a last resort. See, when you morph into an animal, you get all of its instincts, its muscle-memory, all of the urges and fears and desires that lurk in the ancient hindbrain (or so Loki explained to me once). You don't get memories, or thoughts. You aren't really morphing an individual who really exists, after all. You just have the DNA and a memory of meeting the DNA's owner. That gives us enough material to shift into a near-clone, but it's a clone with no history. Our morphs have no scars, no pasts.

I wasn't really thinking about it when I gave him permission, but now I wonder what Billy felt when he first morphed me. I wonder what human instincts unfold themselves when you first find yourself in morph. I wonder what that says about us.

Anyway, we try not to morph other humans without their permission. It seems wrong- maybe not on par with what the yeerks do, but it's at least impersonation.

Instead, we snuck in through the roof when a nurse came up there to illegally smoke a cigarette.

The inside team is made up of me, Tommy, Kate and America. Noh-Varr and Cassie are sitting this one out, on account of being incredibly conspicuous. The outside team is Billy, Teddy, and Eli, who are in pigeon morph, hopping from windowsill to windowsill, hoping to catch something suspicious.

Like I said, badly planned.

Anyway, as soon as we're in, Kate demorphs and remorphs into a carbon copy of Lucky, the therapy dog from the pediatric ward. Lucky only has one eye and a limp, so I hope no one looks too closely at Kate, who looks like Lucky's more fortunate brother.

The rest of us just demorph, for ease of opening doors. As long as we didn't enter the hospital through official channels, our names won't be on file, and we should be able to avoid detection.

Should.

The birds outside are set to start looking at the west end, working down from the top floors (where Controllers are more likely to leave blinds open), so we take the stairs and start looking at the third floor. We open the door for Kate and watch as she trots off to Pediatrics.

The three of us split up, all taking different doors.

My first twelve doors are a bust, but if it were that easy, someone would have already stumbled upon it. Mostly they're locked, or closets, or contain confused patients. "Sorry, I thought this was my mom's room" becomes my mantra. The words start to run together as I say them.

I'm not exactly sure what we expect to find. It's not like there are likely to be jars of yeerks lined up in a supply closet, or a throne room where Visser Three sits and strokes the head of a hairless cat. Still, they can't be transporting patients from the hospital all the way to the school to infest them, so there must be some storage space at the hospital where it's done, right?

…Unless it's actually done in ambulances, or there's a subterranean tunnel from the hospital to the pool, or something.

Yeah, I'm beginning to think we should give up.

At around door twenty-three, I accidentally walk in on some important-looking guy doing paperwork. He looks at me. I look at him.

"What are you doing here?" he demands. "Guests aren't supposed to be in this area-"

Shit. Ok. I can do this.

"Uh. Anna down in 304A keeps yelling about rats. I didn't know who to call, and I couldn't find anyone else."

"Rats?" His dark, bushy eyebrows furrow and his voice almost cracks in horror. I wonder if it's the horror of a hospital employee fearing lawsuits, or the horror of a yeerk fearing Animorphs.

He picks up his phone and dials an internal number.

"Sharon, we have a situation on the third floor, 304A. Send Jack up." Be pauses to gives me a severe look. "Wait outside!" he says. I obediently step outside the office and close the door. I less-obediently press my ear to the wood to eavesdrop on the rest of the conversation.

The doors aren't soundproof, and this is what I hear:

"Yes, yes I know. No, I'm sure one escort will suffice. She's a human invalid, not a Kree soldier, what do you expect? That's an order. Do you want to explain to Visser Three why the Skrull bandits sabotaged the expansion under your watch? I thought not."

I jump backwards just in time for the door to open. I smile innocently as the angry bureaucrat marches down the hall towards 304A.

I wait until he's turned the corner to run for the stairs. Like hell I'm staying around to get caught. The door to the second floor opens, and I almost run into America.

"Nothing down that way," she reports. "How's the third floor?"

"Boring, except for an angry admin." Well, he will be angry when he gets to 304A and finds out I lied.

"Great," America drawls. "Find Tommy?"

"Find Tommy," I agree.

He finds us first.

_Paging Doctor America and Nurse Serrure_, Tommy says from… somewhere.

"Who needs cellphones when you have thought-speech?" America asks.

"Does he know we can't reply, though?" I wonder.

_There's something you need to see in 203._

America and I look at each other. We shrug and go to find Tommy. When we get close to the door, it opens a few inches, and Tommy's head pokes out.

"Good you're here! Get in, quick!"

"What?"

"How-"

I stupidly get too close, and Tommy just grabs the front of my shirt and hauls me through the door. America follows.

"Did you really need to-" I stop. Tommy is gesturing wildly at a small plastic kiddie pool in the middle of the room. Next to it is an open briefcase, with a spindly machine sticking up out of one side. At the top of the machine is a large heating lamp, like the one I use for my pet snake.

I step forward. The pool is filled with murky green liquid. It's a familiar sight, and I know that if I look closely, I will see dark shapes gliding through that water.

It looks like a yeerk pool.

They have a portable yeerk pool.

"What do we do?" I ask. What can we do?

"I found some rubbing alcohol in the cabinet," Tommy says, "Do you think it'd kill them, if I dumped it in the pool?"

America looks uneasy.

"They're aliens. I don't know if that would bother them," I admit. It's not like Loki 645 gave me a bulleted list of yeerk weaknesses. "And it wouldn't make them leave the hospital. They could just rinse out the pool."

He looks at the cabinet thoughtfully. "Do you think it'd break the machine-thingy if I dump it on _that_?"

"You're an idiot," America says. "If you're going to destroy the-" she waves a hand at the machine with the heat lamp.

"-Kandrona generator," I supply.

"-that," she continues, "just _do_ it."

Tommy looks at her blankly. America rolls her eyes and mimes punching.

A pink blush spreads on Tommy's pale face.

"Oh, right."

Before our eyes, he hunches over and morphs gorilla. The story of how he got that morph is several shades of hilarious. It's amazing how easy it is to get into "secure" animal enclosures when you can turn into a fly, and have several friends running interference with zoo staff.

Anyway, Tommy's gorilla morph doesn't see much use. He thought it'd be awesome, but he ended up using the cheetah way more in battle. The gorilla is mostly useful for its opposable thumbs, and, in this case, its ability to smash things into tiny, tiny pieces.

He really only gets one good smash in before we hear footsteps down the hall.

We freeze and look at each other. Two humans and a gorilla. There is no desk, no table, no bed in this room to hide behind, only a set of cabinets and two chairs. Maybe a small human could fit into one of the cabinets, but not two. Not a gorilla.

A cold burst of adrenaline rushes through my veins, and we all try to morph as fast as we can. America and I go small. My first instinct is to morph a mouse, but by the shape of the arms America is sprouting, her instinct was moth.

Tommy will be lucky to be back to human before the footsteps reach the door.

"Think small!" I urge him, and when my mouth changes too much to manage speech, I switch to though-speak, _Think human_!

_I'm trying_! he yells. He lunges for the largest cabinet and opens it, but he's still too large to fit.

America and I jump in, tiny misshapen creatures that don't yet fully resemble a rodent OR an insect.

Tommy wedges as much of his body inside the cabinet as he can, shrinking more and more by the second.

He manages to close the cabinet door scant seconds after we hear the twist of the door handle.

Of course they would be coming for this room. Of _course_.

We wait, silent, for the newcomer to find us.

There's some sort of scuffle in the room outside the cabinet. An adult grunts, rubber sneakers skid on the tile floor. There's the scream of plastic against tile, and the slosh of water. Something bumped the pool.

"Just- freaking-" a deep adult voice says, exerting obvious effort.

Another person gives a muffled screech in reply.

"Come _on_!" the adult urges.

Then the muffled scream becomes un-muffled, and the assailant curses loudly.

"MotherFUCKER! You _bit_ me!"

The door to the room is thrown open, and hits the wall with a bang. Sneakers take off along the hallway, quickly followed by the rapid footsteps of the other guy.

Tommy finishes morphing and pushes the cabinet door open slowly. The room is empty. There's fluid pooling on the floor, but the yeerks in the pool seem unharmed. The destroyed Kandrona generator seems obvious to me, but I guess the Controller didn't notice it.

_Was that a kid?_ America asks.

"It sounded like one," Tommy whispers.

_Let's just get out_.

Tommy peeks out the open door and looks both ways, before sprinting off across the hall.

_Where_-? I ask.

"I'm not staying here a second longer than I need to," Tommy complains. I'll open a window and we'll fly out.

Tommy morphs his falcon, carefully picks my mouse body up in his talons, and together we leap from the second story window and take flight.

The plan sucked. I'm still amazed it worked.

_TIME TO GO_, Tommy calls to the outside team.

_Did you find something_? Billy asks.

_Did you blow your cover_? Eli asks.

_Where's Kate_? Teddy wonders.

_Shit, we forgot Kate_. Tommy does a graceful flip in mid-air, apparently forgetting that he's holding me in his talons. I think if I was a human I'd puke.

_SET ME DOWN FIRST_! I yell. Tommy ignores me.

_Here Katie-Katie_! Tommy sends. I really hope he's not yelling that to the whole hospital.

_You found something?_ Kate asks from… somewhere. It's hard to pinpoint location from thought-speech.

_Been there, done that, ran away screaming. Ready to go_?

_You couldn't have said that before the toddler when to town on my ears?_

_Apparently not_, Eli answers. _Can you get out safely_?

_Uh_, Kate answers. _Probably_?

_Well, stay hidden. We kinda smashed their toys, and they're probably going to be looking for rats_.

_What? Why? You know what, nevermind. I'll be out in five_.

"You found a portable yeerk pool?" Eli sounds horrified and almost angry.

"Yup. It even had a carrying case." Tommy's leaning against the wall with this arms crossed, so I know that his casual tone is hiding unease.

"UGH!" Teddy groans. "You mean the yeerks could be anywhere now? They don't even have to visit the yeerk pool anymore? How are we supposed to-" he cuts himself off, frustrated.

"We're not _supposed to_ anything. It's not like they have an obligation to play fair," Billy says, only it's not Billy. That's Loki 645. My stomach sinks a bit. We just got back from the mission. Billy hasn't had the opportunity to dump the yeerk.

Loki is here, in this room, right now.

"But you destroyed it, right?" Kate asks. She cuts through the complaining like an arrow, intent on her point.

"Yeah, smashed to bits," America agrees. "But we don't know if they have spares."

"They could have dozens. They might just replace the one at the hospital and increase security," Noh-Varr says thoughtfully.

Several of my teammates turn toward Billy.

"Do they?" Cassie asks.

Billy looks up, and for a moment, confusion shows on his face, before the Symbiote realizes which of them is being addressed.

"No idea," Loki replies. "Resource allocation has never been one of my duties. I don't have access to that sort of information. The portable Kandrona generators definitely aren't common, but we might have several dozen on Earth." Billy's face looks thoughtful for a moment, before ze continues. "Or we might have three. It's hard to say."

"Well that was incredibly unhelpful," Eli announces. "Serrure, can you see what the Peace Movement knows? If the yeerks can break the three-day rule, anyone could be a Controller. Keep your eyes open, and lay low for awhile."

"Sure."

"Ok. Ok. So best case scenario, it can't be replaced and the yeerks have to abandon the hospital as an infestation site. Worst case scenario, we set them back a few- days? Weeks? Until they can get a new generator." Kate rubs her forehead, as if trying to chase away a headache.

"Man!" Tommy complains. "Can't we celebrate for _five minutes_ before the yeerks one-up us again? This is bullcrap."

"The yeerks have us outnumbered, with a vast surplus of resources. We're always going to be playing catch-up with them," Noh-Varr agrees.

Kate has a look in her eye. We've all learned to hold a cautious respect for that look, because it means she has a drastic plan.

"Oh god, what?" Billy asks, and I know it's him this time. "Stop looking like that, it's giving me the creeps."

"I don't care what the plan is, just let me do _something_," Cassie barters.

Kate looks thoughtful, but doesn't immediately respond. We all stop our snide remarks to look to Kate, waiting for her to reveal her idea.

"We destroyed the portable Kandrona generator to chase the yeerks out of the hospital."

"Yeah..?"

"So. If we could sabotage the main Kandrona generator…" Kate trails off, waiting for the implications to blossom among our teammates.

"We could chase the yeerks out of the city," I finish.

The possibilities dazzle me. We could be free. Cassie could go back home. The yeerks would be forced out of their hosts, or starve. This could be a real triumph over the alien invaders, when so far we've only inconvenienced the invasion and prolonged the inevitable. We could hit the yeerks where it hurt, instead of just biding our time until the Skrulls come to beat the yeerks back.

"Yeah… one problem: we don't know where it is or how to hurt it. Somehow I doubt it'll be as easy as punching it really hard," Teddy points out.

"Plus, it'll be guarded," Eli continues.

There's a silence as we all think this over.

"This is completely nuts and we're all going to die," Tommy tells us.

"Let's do it," says America.


	6. The Kandrona, Part 2: Loki 645

**Part two: Loki 645**

_**Warnings**__: discussion of fictional genocide, body horror (morphing)_

_Inspired by Animorphs __The Stranger_

I'm not supposed to be here. I'm a hanger-on at best. By rights, I'm supposed to be floating in a jar of water in Billy's room right now. The only reason I'm here at all is because the post-mission debriefing happened too fast to stop by Billy's house. Like all those meetings I spent in Serrure's brain, it's my host who is meant to be here, not the yeerk within.

Considering this, I'm unwilling to speak up when Kate suggests the unthinkable: destroying the Kandrona, which supports all yeerk life in the city.

Funny, how they are so nonchalant about committing genocide. I wonder if anyone even spared a thought for me, for the Peace Movement. I wonder if they even consider us to be sentient beings.

My verbal silence is easy to maintain, but some of my horror must slip through the bond to Billy.

'_You think it's a bad idea_.'

'_I think I need Kandrona radiation to survive.'_

There's surprise, then unease from Billy. Our relationship is too new for him to immediately think of me, I guess. It's a nice idea, that Billy doesn't think of me as part of the yeerk threat. Much nicer than the possibility that he doesn't care.

'_Oh. Yeah, but we could probably find a portable pool for you, right? If the hospital had one, there must be others around.'_

Oh Billy. Oh poor optimistic Billy. At other times, his naivety is endearing, but ignorance is less charming when my life is at stake. Instead of asking him how confident he is that we could find and steal another portable pool within three days (i.e. before I died of starvation), I decide to point out another fatal flaw in this plan:

'_The others are definitely willing to risk their lives to do that.'_ Billy can feel the insincerity in my words, so I don't bother to clarify.

Undaunted, he tries to defend the others. '_Like it or not, you're part of this team. They do know that. They don't want you to die.' _He pauses. _ 'If they did, we had the opportunity to do it. We have the opportunity every time I leave you in the jar._'

'_Thanks Billy, that makes me feel so much better._'

'_Loki come on, we share a head. I can tell what you're feeling_.' I guess my sarcasm didn't fully mask my fear and revulsion. Ironically, all the skill in lying and misdirection I learned from impersonating my hosts over the years are completely useless to hide my feelings from someone with whom I share brainspace.

I can't hide this from Billy, and I'm not sure I even want to.

But how to introduce the topic?

'_You've seen the yeerk pool, yes?' _I ask him. _ 'How many yeerks would you say are in it?'_

'_Like, a lot. A couple thousand, maybe.'_

'_How many Controllers do you think there are in the city?' _

'_I have no idea.'_

'_Your best guess.'_

'_A couple hundred? A thousand?'_

'_Not as many as the yeerks in the pool?'_

'_Uh, geeze, I hope not.'_

'_And yet those hostless yeerks, who aren't responsible for the invasion in even the slightest way, deserve to slowly starve to death?'_

Billy freezes. I continue. _"But hey, maybe they want to take hosts. Maybe they are waiting to take over a human's life and mind, keeping them a helpless slave to our whims.'_

'_You've made your point.'_

'_No, I don't think I have. Not all yeerks want hosts, Billy. There are pacifists who never leave the pool. Not many, no. There are more yeerks who only take voluntary hosts- and I'm not the first yeerk to go native, you know. It's a known danger for the empire. Young yeerks are warned against it before we get our first hosts. 'Don't get attached' we're told. 'They feel so strongly and so vividly, don't get lost in it. Keep a firm boundary between yourself and the host. Their feelings are not yours. Their bonds are not yours. They need us to guide them, like young grubs learning to swim,' _I continue.

'_Stop,'_ he asks.

I finally go silent.

'_You've made your point_.' If I got this reaction from him, I suppose I have.

Then, before I can stop him-

(this is a lie. I am not connected to Billy's central nervous system right now, but it would be so easy to do so. It would be the simplest thing in the world to reach out and paralyze Billy within his own body; it's what I am for, it's what millions of years of evolution have prepared all yeerks to do-)

-Billy speaks aloud.

"What about Loki?" he asks.

Chatter breaks out. Eli and Kate trade glances, having a short conversation in the tilt of their heads and tiny motions of their eyebrows. Perhaps they think we don't know that they do this, checking in with each other before taking a stance on any decision we have to make as a team. It makes good strategic sense, though. Co-leadership is an inefficient style, but Eli and Kate make it work.

"What about him?" Tommy says, arms crossed. He doesn't like me much, but I don't take it personally (_lie_). It isn't about who I am. With him, it's about _what_ I am.

A lot of people in Tommy's life turned out to be Controllers. People he was close to. People he trusted. After we had to bust him out of a foster home populated by Controllers last year, he's only let his guard down around the Animorphs.

I can see why he hates me, when I proved that not even his team is safe.

Cassie looks unsure. "Are we going to let zir die?"

"No," America says.

"Maybe," Eli answers.

Kate looks annoyed, like maybe she and Eli don't see eye-to-eye on this. I tentatively put Kate in the category of 'people to appeal to if/when Serrure comes for me'.

"The death of one yeerk is worth the freedom of hundreds of humans, yes?" Noh-Varr asks.

Several of the others grimace. Billy's stomach churns. There are a lot of loose associations running through Billy's mind now. I don't see them, exactly, but I know that the areas of Billy's brain that deal with memory and horror are working overtime.

I wonder if Noh-Varr knows how counterproductive it was for him to be the one making that argument.

"We decided not to kill Loki when we found out about zir. If we go back now, it won't be because of anything ze's done, it will just be because it's convenient for us," Teddy points out.

"The yeerks have back-up Kandrona generators," Kate says, like she's making an announcement.

'_-and who do you think have access to them?_' I think to Billy._ 'Not the powerless pacifists in the pool, that's for sure.'_

"When we infiltrate the pool and do recon, we'll keep an eye out for one. Worst case scenario, we'll steal one when they replace the one at the hospital," she continues.

'_Bad timeline,' _I point out._ 'If we steal one after we destroy the Kandrona, they won't be replacing the one at the hospital at all; they'll be hoarding those generators like gold.'_

Tired of hearing my running commentary, Billy speaks up. "We'll find one before we sabotage the Kandrona?"

"We'll try," Eli agrees, grimly.

I'm not terribly surprised that Billy was only willing to stand up for me, but not for the thousands of innocent yeerks swimming, unknowing, in the pool. As I know well, it's easier to feel sympathy for the one alien who shares your head than for thousands of aliens you've never met.

Still, this puts me in a difficult position. If I sabotage Billy's role in the upcoming mission, I corroborate every suspicion Eli and Tommy have about my loyalties. If I try to save my brethren in the pool, I won't be able to keep being Billy's partner. And without that reason to keep me around, I'm as good as dead.

It's worse than my-life-or-the-pool. If I sabotage the mission during a crucial moment, the Animorphs will be captured and infested. Serrure will be infested again. All my friends, living out their worst fear. Maybe I'd be spared for my role in their discovery. More likely I'd be the scapegoat for how long the Animorphs have remained at large.

If I sabotage the mission before we are noticed infiltrating the yeerk pool, the Animorphs will just try again later, without me to enforce my conscience on them.

The team's freedom, or the lives of several thousand yeerks? For a better person, the choice might seem obvious.

But how can I allow the team to be captured? How can I let Billy be taken against his will, my place here, wrapped comfortably around his mind, snatched up by someone who will rip and grab and Control? How can I betray Serrure so completely, again?

How can I not? How can I close my eyes and allow Amora 529, Lorelei 337, Mystique 428, Hela 641, Aldrif 100, and countless other yeerks die a slow, agonizing death?

And, let's be honest (for once): I die either way. My choice is to die betraying my friends- either a quick death being stomped by the Animorphs, or a slow death withering in a jar- or to die betraying my people, slow starvation, descending into incoherence as my body begins to disintegrate within Billy's head.

I want to ask, to beg the Animorphs not to force my hand this way, but I keep seeing Serrure's eyes. Not the green irises that Billy knows, but Serrure's face in the mirror. I remember how his face looked every morning we'd wake up, and I'd walk his body down the hall to brush his teeth. I'd look up into the mirror and for a second, while I wasn't paying attention, I swear I could see him screaming behind those eyes.

I promised myself, I promised _Serrure_ I'd never do that to him again.

What is the worth of a promise from Loki 645?

Surely not the death of thousands?

Suddenly, inanely, I wish I knew what Don would think about all this.

I'm not his sibling. I know this. I am not Serrure, and every word I've ever spoken to Don has been a lie, for all that is has come out of his younger brother's mouth. I know everything Don has ever done for me has been meant for Serrure, that I am an unwanted and invisible presence in his life.

Still, I wish I could ask his counsel. Don is kind, and compassionate, and a much better person than Serrure or I. One of the first signs that I was losing myself to my host was my gradual admiration for Don, but looking back, I can't imagine feeling any other way.

That road is closed to me, now. I gave up any claim to Serrure's life. I never should have had it in the first place.

"Any idea on how to get into the yeerk pool? Pretty sure they closed the one at the McDonalds after last time." Tommy makes a good point- on the night that Billy became my host, the others stampeded out of the hidden entrance to the yeerk pool. I use 'stampeded' literally here. Later the next day, the yeerk's cover-story involved a rogue PETA-supporter and a train car of circus animals.

For just a moment, I hope the mission planning will end here. If they can't get into the pool, they can't find the Kandrona. If they can't get into the pool, they can't get caught by Visser Three. But I know my teammates are not stupid. One of them will remember the yeerk in their midst. One of them will turn to me and ask for the location of another entrance. I begin formulating a lie, some reason not to tell them. Oh, what if I said the yeerks had scanners that would vaporize any non-human animals that went through?

"I know another way in."

I am an idiot.

I forgot about Serrure.

Subconsciously, I curl Billy's fingers into fists, his nails biting into his palm. He flinches, and I carefully release control.

'_Loki_?'

'_Sorry_.'

"Awesome," Eli says, rubbing his hands together. "So we've got a way in. Now, what are we looking for here? Some kind of machine?"

"The one at the hospital looked kinda like a heat lamp. So this one should be a giant version of that," Tommy looked around for confirmation: to America, who had seen it with him, to Noh-Varr, our resident alien expert, to Billy and I, the yeerk/human Symbiote.

Noh-Varr probably knows enough about the Kandrona to correct him. I speak first, as a gesture of goodwill. My voice does not shake. Only Billy knows the fear clawing at my mind.

"Not at all. The portable Kandrona are repurposed, cobbled together from supplies native to Earth. The main Kandrona will be large, cylindrical, like a pill or an egg. Maybe nine feet from end to end. It emits invisible radiation; you can feel it buzzing from a dozen yards away." A thought occurs to me, and I have to fight to keep from smiling. "It isn't necessarily located within the yeerk pool complex."

America gives me an unimpressed, incredulous look. I return it with one of practiced innocence.

"You're going to have to explain that one, slug-kid," Kate demands.

I spread my hands wide. "The Kandrona emits radiation that is concentrated in the yeerk pool. But it has a range of several miles. The generator could be anywhere in the city."

"But wouldn't they keep it close by?" Eli asks, perhaps suspicious of my motives. "The pool is the most well-protected yeerk settlement. If this thing's so important, why would they keep it anywhere else?"

Because the Kandrona rays can travel a greater distance if it's located on higher ground, I do not tell him. I honestly don't know where it is, but I'm not about to make it any easier for them to find it, either.

Instead, I shrug. "Maybe we know better than to keep all our eggs in one basket."

"Uhuh. And you just happen to know what this thing looks like, but not where it is?" Cassie asks.

I'm surprised it's her asking. She hasn't questioned me yet, but I suppose it was only a matter of time.

"I've seen the one on the Pool Ship," I explain. "I assume the Earth-based Kandrona will be similar."

"Pool Ship?" Kate echoes, with dread. It's still odd for me to interact with the team without guile, as myself. I forget how much they don't know.

"How do you think we got to Earth?" I ask her. "Of course we have a yeerk pool in orbit."

After I dropped that revelation on the others (and it really shouldn't be that surprising, if they had any sense), the meeting dissolves into chatter. I recede back into Billy's mind, allowing him full use of his body once more.

This is probably a bad thing, because I stop paying as much attention, and by the time I refocus on the conversation, I've been volunteered as a Kandrona-detector.

-which is not something I am actually capable of.

Wonderful.

'_It's not a terrible plan_,' I admit to Billy. '_but it relies on abilities I absolutely don't have_.'

'_You literally said that you could feel it when you're near the Kandrona_,' he replies, unconvinced.

'_Not consistently. Not well enough to use it as a radar_!'

'_Loki, I know you don't want to do this, but you can't lie to me. I can tell this freaks you out. I can tell you're trying to find a way out of it_.'

The frustrating thing is that I can _absolutely_ lie to Billy, but this time he has mis-identified the lie.

'_It's like the feeling of the air before a thunder storm. Yes, it has an identifiable atmosphere, but I'm no meteorologist_,' I explain.

I can already tell that Billy doesn't believe me.

Well, the good news is that if I can't locate the Kandrona, then neither can the rest of the team. The bad news is that they'll all think I'm tricking them- which I _am_, but not in this particular way.

It's like the worst of both worlds.

Eli lays out the plan: "Ok, so Kate and I plotted out a map of the city on my phone. If we assume the Kandrona has to be within say, two miles of the yeerk pool, that gives us a search radius and a place to start."

"This is gunna take _so long_," Tommy complains. Everyone ignores him.

"We'll split up to cover more ground, but the only people we're sure can sense the Kandrona are Loki and Noh-Varr," Kate continues. "Cover as much ground as you can today, and if necessary we'll meet up again after school tomorrow."

"I'm going," Cassie announces. "If I have to stay in this room for one more day I think I'm going to implode."

Kate and Eli trade glances, as they always do. Before either of them can raise objections, someone else beats them to the punch.

"You can be in my group," Teddy volunteers. "If anyone asks, we can say you're my cousin. You don't look _that_ much like the picture on the news anymore, not with what Noh-Varr did to your hair."

Cassie does not pat her cropped hair self-consciously, but it looks like she wants to.

"Sure, okay, whatever, can we go?" Tommy demands.

No one has the heart or energy to argue with Cassie. I quickly volunteer to be in the other search party (the one without the highly suspicious Amber Alert candidate). Unfortunately, that means that she's in Noh-Varr's group, making them even more suspicious by putting the Kree soldier and the missing girl in the same search party.

If we don't get caught, it will be a god-damn miracle.

Both groups start from the Warehouse, my group walking West while Noh-Varr's group walks East. We're supposed to follow a vague zig-zag pattern, to cover the largest amount of ground while staying close enough to the buildings that we could, theoretically, sense the Kandrona. This is all based on my vague guesstimate of 'a dozen yards', which is (as previously stated), a vague guesstimate and definitely not concrete enough to be basing a search pattern on.

None of my objections are heeded, because everyone knows I don't want to be on this mission, and thus all of my complaints are suspect.

'_I'm not bitter or anything_,' I think bitterly, with bitter expression.

'_Just do your best_,' Billy asks.

There's an air of weariness about him, and for a moment I wish I could do as he asks.

Then I remember that I'm being asked to facilitate the genocide of my species, and I don't feel as bad.

"Alright ladies and gentlemen, ready to look for a q-tip in a needle-stack?"

I am the only one who is amused by my turn of phrase. The others are either ignoring me or giving me unimpressed looks.

'_Loki, why?' _Billy asks.

'_It's much more dangerous than looking for a needle in a haystack,_' I explain.

He gives me the mental equivalent of a groan.

With that, we set off walking down the street.

My team consists of Kate, America, Tommy, Serrure, and me/Billy. As we walk, Tommy starts up a conversation with Kate about the relative likelihood that the chemistry teacher Kate had last year (and Tommy has this year) is secretly a Soviet spy.

"Ms. Romanova isn't old enough to be a Soviet spy, Tommy, the USSR fell like twenty years ago."

"That's what they want you to think!" Tommy says with a grin.

I try to ignore them. I try to even out Billy's breathing and focus on the air around us. I hear the dull sound of an airplane overhead, background chirping of birds, the rustling of leaves in the wind. I hear the roar of traffic, someone's cellphone going off, and a dozen people (including Tommy) talking.

I don't feel anything like the Kandrona.

We move on.

After we've walked half a mile, everything becomes too much: the background noise, the smell of gasoline, Tommy's constant chatter, America's warning looks, Serrure's silent stare.

I can't keep up this pace. I can't keep doing this. I'm not sure if Billy's anxiety is infecting my mood or (more likely) this feeling is all me.

"Flying would be faster," I announce.

Kate scrunches up her face in annoyance, but tells everyone else to morph pigeon- our usual bird morphs are all different, and would look suspicious flying together.

We peel off from the group one by one, ducking behind corners and bushes and benches until only Billy and I are left walking quietly down the sidewalk.

I reach the end of the block and look around. There are few people out and about, taking walks or running errands, but none of them are paying attention to Billy and me. I step backwards into an alcove between a brick wall and a large planter.

My skin changes first. The color fades out of it, making Billy's arms look like they're from a black-and-white photo. Then the feathers start to grow, changing Billy's sparse arm hair into soft down feathers and sleek flight feathers. Our bones thin out and become hollow, and I'm beginning to fear that the long, fragile bones will snap when we finally start shrinking.

Morphing isn't pretty, and it doesn't make a lot of sense. It never happens the same way twice. This time, we have almost fully-functional pigeon wings before our face changes at all. I'm glad there aren't any security cameras nearby, because not only would we be in big trouble, but whoever was watching them would probably have nightmares about this.

Billy does.

The floor rushes up to meet us as Billy's sneakers melt into pigeon claws.

'_It's kind of nauseating, having you in control when we morph_,' Billy tells me. '_I'm feeling kind of dizzy_.'

'_I felt the same way the other day, it might just be the pigeon morph_.' Serrure would know for sure. He spent several months watching me morph in his body.

Now _I'm_ feeling a bit sick.

Luckily, the pigeon mind doesn't care about any of this, and I sit back and let it take over for a few minutes.

The pigeon cocks its head, looks this way and that, examining everything that might possibly be food.

It notices several other pigeons around, and takes to the air. Surely the other pigeons will have found something to eat.

The pigeon isn't another entity sharing our head, like Billy and me. Instead, we have become the pigeon, and its instincts are our own. When I say I let the pigeon mind take control, imagine letting your tiredness take control after a long day, imagine taking the back seat to your hunger after you wake up. The pigeon-hunger is our hunger now, just as the pigeon-fear is ours, and the pigeon-instinct to flock together.

The other pigeons are, of course, our team.

_Are we going to be close enough to the buildings for you to smell the Kandrona, or whatever_? America asks.

_I have twelve yards of leeway, I think we should be fine,_ I answer, sounding much more confident than I feel. Changing your tone via thought-speak is a skill, and I have learned it well.

_Well, let's get moving_, Kate says with a sound like the pigeon equivalent of a sigh.

We make much better time in the air, breezing past four blocks in the time it took for us to walk one. I don't feel anything like the Kandrona, and the most exciting thing that happens for the next hour is that Tommy's pigeon-mind gets distracted by a half-eaten burger lying on the sidewalk, and has to be intercepted before he tries to eat it.

We're beginning to think about finding a place to demorph when I feel something.

For a second, I am filled with dread; If we've found the Kandrona, my life will be over one way or another.

Then the thought passes, and I realize that this feeling, while similar, is not Kandrona radiation.

This isn't ozone, tingling, the pressure of the air before a storm. This is a buzzing, a heat, like the rustling of grass and a dozen people whispering at once. It's eerie, and strange, and it might be enough to distract my team from this terrible, monstrous mission.

Billy is beginning to notice it to. '_Is that-?_'

I wonder if the others can feel it.

I follow it.

_Wait, what_? Tommy says as I peel off from the flock, pumping my little pigeon wings and taking to the sky.

_Where are you going_? Kate demands.

_I found something_.

Four other pigeons take to the air and follow me. I glide past a bank, a dry cleaners, several clothing stores and a Christian bookstore that I can only assume sells Christian books.

_This is a bit far, isn't it_? Kate asks. _I thought you could only sense it from a couple yards away_.

_Can't you feel it_? I ask. The buzzing is getting stronger, and the wind and the buzz combine to guide my pigeon wings onward. I don't feel forced, but instead like I'm riding a wave, being swept along.

_It feels like a heartbeat_, Serrure says. _It wants us to go this way_.

_Ok, that's not creepy or anything, _Tommy accuses_. Also, aren't we flying the wrong way? This is the part of town Noh is supposed to cover!_

_It's here, it's right here_!

I swoop down over rows of houses, heading toward the lot at the end of the block. My pigeon eyes catch a glimpse of white hair down on the sidewalk, and Billy has just enough time to think-

'_Is that Noh-Varr_?'

-before we're gone.


	7. The Trip part 1: Eli

_**Note: **__Inspired by Animorphs: __The Invasion__ and _The Stranger_, as well as __Young Avengers Presents Issue 1: Patriot_

The sun is shining in my eyes.

I squint and turn my head. I have to blink a couple times before my vision clears up.

"What happened?" Teddy asks.

I don't know. We're standing on the sidewalk downtown, about a ten minute walk from my grandma's apartment. I don't know how we got here, or what's going on.

I glance around. Along with Teddy, Cassie and Noh-Varr are within eyesight.

Something weird just happened. We've been teleported or kidnapped or blacked-out or something.

I knew I shouldn't have put the runaway and the Kree soldier on the same team.

"You can't be out here," I tell Cassie urgently. How did they talk me into this in the first place? If a yeerk sees her-! If they see her with _us_, they'll know we had something to do with her disappearance.

We all look at each other, and as one we duck into the small frozen yogurt place across the street.

We take a booth toward the back, Cassie sandwiched in between Teddy and Noh-Varr to shield her from sight through the large glass windows.

"So did anyone see a teleporter, or-?" Cassie asks, hunched over and trying to appear small.

I shake my head. "Nothing. No flash of light, no strange machines. Just there, then here."

"And if we're here, where are Billy and the others?" Teddy asks nervously.

We all look at Noh-Varr, who's been entirely silent. To my surprise, he's just sitting there in the plastic booth looking glazed and blissful.

"You ok there, Noh?" Teddy asks gently.

This is it. Noh-Varr's lost it.

"He's back," Noh-Varr says, in a daze. "Plex is back online."

"You've lost me," Cassie sighs. "What's Plex?"

"It's his ship," I explain. "But it's at the bottom of the ocean, isn't it? Do alien computers not need air to reboot?"

Noh-Varr's joy has dimmed a bit, and now he looks less like he just found out his best friend is alive, and more like he's looking through a photo album full of dead friends.

"Plex was destroyed when the ship crashed down to Earth," he answers. "But I can feel him up there in orbit." He looks up, as if to see the spaceship through the ceiling and several miles of stratosphere.

"Feel him-?" Cassie asks.

"Kree technology operates via telepathy," Teddy explains. "It's also how we can talk to eachother while we're in morph."

"I thought the morphing technology was from the Skrulls, not the Kree." Cassie has only really gotten the spark-notes version of the Animorphs' origin, so it's not surprising that the specifics are tripping her up.

"It's complicated." Teddy wasn't there at the start either, and he shrugs helplessly.

"Hey, speak a little louder, I think the cashier can't hear you yelling about aliens." I lean heavily on the plastic table and stare out of the front window. Something's not right about all this. Something's familiar…

A couple with a stroller walks past the window. On the other side of the street, a group of middle-schoolers walks home together.

Two white teenagers jog past, one heavy-set and wearing a baseball cap, one taller and wearing a hoodie. They high-five each other and quickly disappear from view.

Hey, was that-?

A third boy walks past the window. He's shorter than they are, a little bald black boy wearing an over-large blue sweatshirt.

It's me.

I nudge Teddy, but he looks at me (the me at the booth, not the me at the window) instead of where my finger is pointing. By the time he turns, the pedestrian is gone.

"What?"

"We have to go." I get up and stand by the door, trying to find the boy in my line of sight.

"Yeerks?" Cassie asks behind me. I glance back at her. She looks cautious, but not scared.

"I'm not sure," I admit. Did I really see myself, sixteen years old and hiding from the world under a hand-me-down hoodie? How? Why? The Yeerks don't have any Skrull hosts (they're notoriously difficult to infest, according to Noh-Varr; they can use their shape-shifting to move their ear canal whenever a yeerk manages to get close.), and even if they did have morph-capable hosts, they don't know who I am, right? They wouldn't have any reason to impersonate me.

Unless they _do_ know who I am.

"You guys stay here, I have to check something out." I open the shop door slowly, trying to keep the bell from chiming.

"It might be yeerks and you want to go out on your own?" Teddy scoffs. "Yeah. Like we're going to let you do that."

"Cassie can't be seen," I insist.

"Give me ten minutes."

It actually only takes three minutes for Teddy to duck into the tourist trap on the other street corner and buy a stupid knit beanie and a loud orange scarf for Cassie to wear.

Then he grabs an empty Starbucks cup from the sidewalk and shoves it into her hands.

"No one wants to look too closely at hipsters," he explains. "You've seen one, you've seen them all."

The hat does disguise Cassie's blonde hair, but I'm still bitter that we've lost so much time trailing the imposter. To make up for the delay, I morph Condor and take to the skies.

Before all this started, I was shit at reading maps. It just didn't seem intuitive to me. Instead, I navigated mostly by landmarks: the school, the comic shop, the _other_ comic shop, my grandparents' apartment, my mom's old apartment, Billy's house, Nate's place, the park, whichever places I spent the most time.

After soaring over the city on my very own wings, maps began to make a lot more sense. Birds see the streets from that angle, after all (even if they're usually more interested in dumpsters).

I get a couple false-positives before I find the right bald black head in the crowded street. I'm four blocks away from the others now, so I send a message in thought-speak. We haven't tested the range much, so I'm not sure how far away they can hear me.

_We're on our way_, Teddy sends back. He must've morphed something, too.

My doppelgänger settles down on a bench and fiddles nervously with his phone.

I settle comfortably on an awning and prepare to wait him out.

Every so often, a pedestrian passes the bench, and the not-Eli looks up as each stranger approaches.

There's an older woman with a walker, a McDonald's employee on break, an angry businessman on a cellphone, and a teenage girl in purple who-

_Kate_? I call to her.

She stops and looks around. I get a good look at her face- it's definitely her. But she's wearing her hair in a ponytail, up and out of her face. Kate has blunt dark bangs that fall just about at her eyebrows. She did it on impulse about four months ago, and her group of friends at school didn't stop talking about it for a week. I don't know a lot about hair, but I know this: you can go from long hair to bangs, but you can't go back. You have to wait for it to grow out.

"Hello?" she asks suspiciously, her eyes quickly passing over me in her search for the speaker.

When no one answers, she gives up and walks away.

Kate knows my thought-voice. She knows my Condor morph.

What's going on?

_Was that Kate? _the harrier asks as he lands beside me on the awning.

_I don't know._

_I'm sensing a pattern_, he teases.

I do, too.

A couple of teenagers walk up to the bench. It takes me a minute to recognize Cassie and Noh-Varr. I know what they say about Clark Kent and Superman, but just by changing her style and slouching over an empty cup of coffee, Cassie manages to look like a subtly different person. Noh-Varr has apparently inherited Teddy's heavy black jacket, and looks like an extra from The Matrix. Together, they look like a couple of kids who are trying too hard to be noticed, which paradoxically makes them fade into the crowd of other kids trying to be noticed.

Cassie glances toward my clone, then looks at me and Teddy, raising her eyebrows in a silent question.

_We found a Kate-clone, too. Maybe there are others. We'll follow him_, I decide.

Cassie nods, and starts up a conversation with Noh-Varr about whether to buy a radio for the clubhouse.

Before my doppelganger finally gets bored of his phone, the bus comes. Cassie and Noh-Varr follow him on, and Teddy and I take flight in pursuit. Two stops later, fake-Eli gets off. The other two stay on the bus, and Teddy reassures them that we'll keep an eye on the fake while they walk from the next stop.

I know this place, too. I take that same bus every two weeks to this block, then walk over to the post office to check my PO Box.

Um, like this fake-me is doing right now.

I flap my wings nervously, and pace a few feet in either direction from my perch on a neighboring rooftop.

_What's he doing_? Teddy asks.

_Checking my PO Box_ I realize. Like I do. Like I've done for the last two years. Like I did when I used to wear that hoodie, when Kate wore her hair like that, back before we got the morphing power.

In bird morphs, we're unable to follow my clone or imposter or past self or whoever inside the building. Instead, we fluff up our feathers and wait him out.

Eli comes out of the post office before Cassie and Noh-Varr catch up. He's holding a small package under his arm. It's about the size of a football, just a brown cardboard box with a packaging label stuck to the top.

_Do we follow him or wait for the others_? Teddy asks.

I flutter my wings.

_We wait. I know where he's going_.

It doesn't take long for Noh-Varr and Cassie to catch up, and then we're off again. Teddy and I fly lazy circles high above our friends as we tail this person who looks like me, who is re-tracing my steps.

I was right, of course. He's walking home.

Past the old gas station, around the corner, down three blocks.

Cassie and Noh-Varr are getting too close, barely fifteen feet behind him now. He never looks back. I wonder if I was that oblivious when I was his age. It seems like I'm on a hair-trigger these days, hyper-aware that anyone on the street could be trying to kill me.

Part of me wishes I could be that carefree again. Another part thinks it's stupid; even without yeerks, this kid is asking for trouble being this unconcerned about his surroundings.

I circle around again, angling my wings so I swoop a bit lower this time.

Two guys approach my doppelganger…

Oh shit. I know these guys: Jason and Zack. They hang out on that street corner selling weed. Zack's younger brother is in my grade. A couple years ago, we got in a fight because he said my grandfather was lying about being a victim of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. He said it was all a plot to discredit the US government. I gave him a black eye and got suspended for a week.

Ever since then, Zack gets all up in my face every time he sees me.

I circle back around before the roofs obscure my view of the confrontation.

There's Zack, leaning over the kid who looks like me. There's Jason, standing behind him, trapping him and backing up Zack.

There's Cassie, marching over to them, yelling.

It's like the moment after you put on 3D glasses at a movie theater. The blue and red images merge together and suddenly everything looks more real and immediate.

I remember this.

I remember being down there, trapped between Jason and Zack, when some blonde-haired freshman comes screaming out of nowhere, trying to defend my grandfather.

I remember telling her to butt out. I remember pushing her away. I remember Jason's laughter and I remember almost losing that cardboard box tucked under my arm.

As I watch, the familiar scene plays out below.

_Shit shit shit_ I send to Teddy. I can't interrupt Cassie's diatribe; I have to let it play out like before. That's how time travel works, right? Right? _Shit shit shit holy fuck_

_I wouldn't worry about it_, Teddy tells me, his thought-voice calm and reassuring, _Cassie can handle herself. And if she needed help, Noh-Varr is as strong as like, five guys._

_He's not an imposter_, I tell Teddy, unable to find the words to describe what I have just realized. _This has happened before._

_What_?

_He's not an imposter- he's me_, this time I expand the radius of my thought-speak to include Noh-Varr and Cassie.

Far below us, Noh-Varr tilts his head and looks at the retreating back of my doppelganger past self. He places a pacifying hand on Cassie's shoulder.

We have to talk. Regroup. This changes… everything.

Noh-Varr and Cassie loiter next to my grandparents' apartment building like a pair of the most conspicuous spies ever.

Maybe they look less obvious to people who aren't me. Maybe a passing Controller will take them for awkward suburban teens trying to covertly buy weed instead of rogue time travelers trying to sabotage the Yeerk Empire.

The boy who used to be me walked inside the faded blue door several minutes ago, but I know exactly what's happening inside: _My grandmother asks what I'm doing home so early. I readjust my backpack nervously, trying to hide how heavy and bulky it's become with the package I'm smuggling into my room. She sends me to bring grandpa a snack. He's awake when I come in. We talk. He calls me Hannah. I don't correct him- it happens too often for me to bother. He's not doing it maliciously- he has trouble with words sometimes, and the name change wasn't so long ago. I sit with him awhile, then retreat to my room with my backpack and the box I just picked up from the mail._

Teddy and I are silent as we sit on the branch, watching through the bedroom window as the boy I used to be empties a syringe into his thigh.

_I thought you said your mom's insurance was going to cover hormones_, Teddy says. This would be easier to handle if he sounded accusing or angry. Instead there's a note of innocent confusion in his voice, like he's just putting the pieces together and thinks he might have remembered something wrong.

_I lied_.

_I wish you'd told us_. Now his voice sounds empty, somehow. Maybe he's feeling betrayed. Maybe he's kicking himself for not seeing what was going on in my life. The thing Teddy gets, what I'm not going to explain to him, is that this wasn't about him. This was about me, about making a decision about my own life, about deciding that my health was more important than someone else's ideas about how my life should go.

The universe is big and broad. Somewhere out there, there might be an Eli who didn't buy street hormones and inject them in secret, behind a locked door.

Maybe things turned out okay for that Eli, but I sure as hell don't think he would have joined the fight against the yeerks.

"So are either of you going to tell us what's going on, or are we just going to hang out under the tree until sunset?" Cassie asks, turning toward Noh-Varr as if she's having a casual conversation with him, and not actually talking to two birds perched in the tree above her.

_We'll be leaving again soon. After this, Billy texted me and we went to hang out at the mall._ It's not a day I'm likely to forget.

"So we're really in the past," Cassie says quietly, as if saying the words aloud will make this feel more real.

Noh-Varr seems unconcerned. I guess time-travel is less impressive when you've lived for several months on an alien planet.

"I'm up there with Plex," he tells us to fill the time. "A dozen Kree warriors are waiting in orbit, one last-ditch effort to free our kinsmen from the yeerks. They don't know what's ahead."

_We can't change things,_ Teddy warns. _We'd make a paradox or erase ourselves from existence or something, wouldn't we?_

"It seemed fine when I intervened with those jackasses earlier," Cassie points out, for the sake of argument.

It's Noh-Varr who shakes his head this time. He casts one last yearning glance toward the sky and says "There's no point. Someone else would die, some other tragedy would seem just as painful. If we tried to prevent this, we might lose ourselves trying to prevent everything."

_Are you sure-?_ I ask . These are his people. I might be hesitant to fuck with time, but Noh-Varr has so much less to lose, and so much more to gain.

"You have to keep going. You can't live in the past," he says. It sounds final, like a gavel pounding a desk or an ancient clock striking twelve.

The younger Eli comes strolling down the steps exactly on time, and Teddy and I watch in amusement as Cassie and Noh-Varr scramble to remain unseen.

Teddy and I demorph and remorph behind a dumpster. I wish I could say that this is the grossest thing I have done for the cause, but after we morphed ants last month, nothing can compare.

Cassie has ditched her hipster disguise. She obviously doesn't need it, because the yeerks aren't looking for her here in the past, and also it makes my past-self less likely to figure out that we're following him.

The non-morphers walk casually through the mall, silently shadowing the younger Eli, as well as Billy and Tommy, after the twins arrive several minutes later.

Teddy and I watch intermittently through sky-lights, scrambling for a clear view and unable to hear a thing.

_Hey look, it's Kate_! Teddy exclaims, his beady hawk-eyes locked onto the figure of a slim brunette Korean girl animatedly trying to engage her friend in shopping, while a Latina teen- clearly America- looks on, bored and indulgent.

_The gang's all here_. The weird thing about thought-speech is that it's directed at others by its nature. My words are quiet and ironic, but no one can imagine I didn't mean for them to hear it.

The white head of Noh-Varr and the golden waves of Cassie pass underneath us, dogging the steps of yet another familiar face: Serrure. He's tiny, almost mouse-like from my vantage point. I didn't realize how much he's grown since last summer.

Yet unseen, I know that Nate is somewhere under the roof of the mall as well. Minus Noh-Varr, Teddy is the only one of us who was absent that day- spending the day with his mother on her rare day off. As the familiar events play out on mute below us, memories emerge from dusty corners of my mind and become sharper:

_Billy, his voice nervous, asking if we think Teddy likes him. Billy, antsy and self-conscious, asking me and Tommy for a distraction. Tommy's rapid-fire text messages suggesting a list of increasingly-bizarre activities. Me, ever the mediator between the twins, deciding on the mall._

_I see Nate_, Teddy reports. He's two skylights over, near something that I hope was once a squirrel nest.

This rooftop is gross, FYI.

I hop over, fluttering my huge black wings a bit to quicken the motion.

There's Nate, our old friend, chatting casually with his new friends while my past-self and the twins look on in confusion.

We used to be tight. Me, Nate, and Billy were best friends since middle school. We spent hours upon hours browsing comic book shops, watching terrible dollar movies, and playing on Billy's old Playstation in the years before Tommy and Teddy came along.

Then, something changed, and Nate stopped having time for us. This is probably the last conversation any of us had with him. I watch it unfold for the second time through a dusty window, trying to decode the exchange from gestures and facial expressions.

Billy makes the first overture, waving and calling out across the food court. Nate looks up from his conversation, and an odd expression flashed across his face: smug satisfaction? It doesn't seem right, but my morph has great eyes. It's only there for a minute, before Nate's face melts into the more appropriate fondness he's always exhibited toward the brunette twin.

Billy catches up to Nate easily, gestures with his hand back to the younger Eli and Tommy. Nate shrugs off the invitation, nodding his head to his own companions. The message is clear, even without sound: Nate's busy, but he appreciates the invite. He leans in closer to Billy, places a hand on his arm, and smiles. I don't remember Nate being this touchy-feely when we hung out. It almost makes me think that the budding relationship between Billy and Teddy was what chased Nate off, but that seems wrong, somehow. The gesture doesn't seem _longing_, but _possessive_, somehow. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it could even be _threatening_.

Nate pulls away, finally, after what felt like several minutes but was probably much less. He makes his apologies to Billy, nods to his friend, and leaves the food court. Billy walks back to his brother and the boy I used to be, dejected.

Nate and his friend, a blonde girl in the grade below me, make a bee-line for the door, and I take flight to beat them there. Something is up with Nate. If I can just hear him speak, maybe I can figure out what it is.

I sit, a twenty-pound bird trying to unobtrusively perch on a trashcan, and wait for him to come to me.

"-really, what's with the hangers- on, Kang?" the blonde (Amy something?) asks Nate as he holds the door open for her.

My old friend shrugs casually. "It was a warning," he says, as if that explains anything.

"Yeah? Well I don't think he got it." Maybe-Amy replies, doubtful.

"It wasn't for the kid."

They pass my perch without a glance, and I finally notice something on the back of Nate's shirt: big, friendly bubble letters spelling out two words_: THE SHARING_.

There's a whirlpool where my heart should be, so many revelations in one day having completely overcome my ability to emotionally react.

People are starting to stop and stare. Usually, if I keep my distance, my condor morph can be mistaken for the turkey vulture that's actually native to the area. As several middle-schoolers take out their phones and try to sneak closer to me, I am uncomfortably aware that the California Condor has been extinct on this coast for decades.

I take flight before they can get any clear photos.

Everything happens so fast: little Serrure, who must already have Loki 645 curled around his brain, who watched the exchange between Billy and Nate with shiny, clever eyes, bounces up to my younger self and the twins. I remember thinking he seemed immature, much more child-like than the mere three years between our ages would suggest. I was annoyed, and I see it reflected in the curl of my younger self's lips as he regards Serrue/Loki. Tommy shrugged- is shrugging, I see through plate-glass windows. He wants to leave, having exhausted his attention span for this trip. He doesn't care if some freshman tags along on the walk home.

America and Kate join next, in a move that always confused me. Kate and Billy were sort-of friends, the kind of classmates who sat together and made jokes during class, but didn't hang out or text outside of school. We didn't know America at all, yet, but it was she who strolled up and told us bluntly that they were coming along. My condor eyes see her suspicious glares aimed at Serrure, and I find another mystery solved before my eyes.

Without fanfare, without formal agreement, the whole ratty group disembarks.

Just like that, the journey that changed my life begins.

I don't know how to tell Teddy that Nate is a Controller. Cassie and Noh-Varr wouldn't understand the significance of it. To them, he's just another classmate, just another human with a yeerk in his head. To me, to Teddy and Tommy and Billy, he was one of us. To find out that he's been the enemy for longer than we _knew_ there was an enemy?

I can't even find the words to express how that feels. How am I supposed to tell Teddy?

Instead, we fly in silence, guiding Cassie and Noh-Varr to the Stark's abandoned mansion by another route.

_So this is when it all started_, Teddy says. It sounds almost reverent. My stomach churns at the thought of what I'll witness, for the second time.

_It started when the yeerks began the invasion_, I correct him. _This is just the night we find out_.

"I got infested three months before this," Cassie tells us, speaking to the cool Spring air unselfconsciously.

"It's been…" Noh-Varr trails off, trying to do the math in his head. "Years. Kree children are conscripted into the army when they're about as old as a human nine-year old."

_When I was nine, I was playing Pokemon_, Teddy says.

_You still play Pokemon,_ I point out.

_Not so much, anymore_.

We're silent for a bit. None of us have a lot of time for games, and when we do have time, it's still hard to relax.

"I didn't realize you guys knew Nate," Cassie says, trying to revitalize the conversation as we trek down side streets in the dying light of evening.

Maybe I won't have to tell Teddy. Maybe I won't get the chance.

_He was_… Teddy trails off. _Me, Eli, the twins and Nate, we were a group before all of this started. It sounds dumb now, but we were nerds, right? It kinds felt like us against the world. Then Nate drifted apart, and now-_

"Now it really is us against the world," Cassie says, her smile more ironic than amused.

_Yeah,_ Teddy says lamely.

_We're here_, I announce, eager to put off this conversation.

The Stark mansion tonight is an image that's burned into my mind. Even at the time it seemed ominous, dangerous. I was convinced that something terrible was going to happen, although, granted, my fears were more like Tommy breaking his leg or Billy getting gay-bashed than witnessing an alien spacecraft landing.

The building is still mostly standing, here in the past. It's falling apart, and it bares the burns and structural damage from the frat party that finally got the place condemned, but it looks recognizably like a house. In the dark, it might even be a nice house, the summer home of the Stark family who famously left this place to rot after they filed for bankruptcy.

Gravel shuffles in the darkness, footsteps on grass and rubble. Cassie freezes, but Noh-Varr has the presence of mind to pull her behind a wall, effectively hiding both of them. White and blonde are distinctive hair colors, even in the dim light.

"Pretty sure this isn't a short cut. Pretty sure this is trespassing," Billy's voice pierces the darkness.

"Do you ever get tired of being a spoil-sport?" Tommy replies. I can't see any better than a human in the dark, but Tommy's bleached hair makes him easy to spot, creeping through the overgrown lawn.

"You are, indeed, the sworn enemy of all that is fun," Loki 645 says with Serrure's voice. It's distinctly a Loki-sentence, not a Serrure-sentence. Sometimes I wonder how anyone who knew Serrure before could mistake Loki for him- not that we knew Serrure before, either.

"I do need to be home at some point," my own voice points out from somewhere in the darkness. "Grandma is already on me about going out on a school night."

"Relax," Tommy replies. He's probably waving a hand around, trying to placate them, he does that a lot- "This'll only take a minute."

"What's that?" America asks. No one asks what she means, because a moment later, we all know. For a single instant, like lightning, the lot is brightly lit, before the darkness rolls in again. The sound of the crash has all the kids scrambling, Noh-Varr and Cassie included. Walls topple over, part of the roof caves in, and a deep furrow is gouged into the lawn where the space cruiser skidded to a stop.

I shake dust out of my feathers and check to make sure Cassie, Noh-Varr, and Teddy remain unseen. The non-morphers were thrown off their feet, but seem alright. Cassie is brushing dirt from her jeans, and seems unhurt. Teddy is circling above.

"What the hell is that?" Kate asks.

"Omg my god," Tommy breathes.

"This can't be happening," Billy repeats to himself. "This can't be happening."

It is happening. It's happening again.

The spaceship opens. From inside comes first a voice, then a form.

"Don't be afraid," she calls to us.

Then, a green creature limps out of the twisted metal pod. She's tall and muscular, covered in green scaly skin and purple fabric. It's funny to think that she's not the first alien we ever met. She's just the first alien we _knew_ we'd met. After all, we already knew Teddy.

_I feel like I should do something, _Teddy tells me_. She's the Skrull princess. She's my people's ruler, right?_

_We're not changing things,_ I remind him.

"My name is Princess Anelle," she tells the gathered kids. "And you are all in danger."

I let her words wash over me. I already know the content: the yeerk invasion, her fleet's demise, her own impending death, our one hope: the blue cube she holds in her arms. Instead, I focus on details I missed before: her face, focused and direct. Her voice: pushing away grief to help this tiny band of human kids resist complete annihilation. The yellow of her eyes. The smooth muscles under shining scales, so similar to Teddy's Skrull form.

The looks on our faces, the future Animorphs: Billy, listening in horror. Tommy, growing angrier with every detail. Kate, thoughtful and solemn. America, confusion, her competent, badass persona finally slipping in the face of the unthinkable. Serrure, uncomfortable and uncertain, his eyes darting from Anelle to the other kids, to the darkness around them. I wouldn't have guessed it then, but now I know that he knew better than any of us what waited for us out in the darkness. He knew exactly how much the yeerks didn't want this information getting out. He knew exactly the shape and size targets Anelle was painting on our backs by telling us about the yeerks, by giving us the power to morph.

Anelle holds out the blue box, and the six kids obediently step forward. They each place a hand on the box, and it gently begins to light up, flooding the area with blue light. The kids look strange in the light, as if they are all aliens themselves.

I catch a glimpse of Noh-Varr and Cassie standing maybe twenty feet back, their faces also illuminated by the appearance of blue light.

She only has time to give them one final warning before someone else notices the light coming from the old Stark place: _never stay in morph for more than two hours, lest you be stuck forever_.

Then the first blast hits. Anelle's spaceship explodes behind her, and the six kids freeze.

"Run," she demands, not looking at them, and not moving her lips. They do. They scatter, jumping over rocks and crumbling statues, disappearing into the night.

The Bug Fighter hovers overhead without lights, a huge mass of black in the darkness, visible only by the lack of stars.

It fires no shots after the first. Maybe the first was a warning shot. Maybe it's a futile attempt to remain low-key.

Several shapes drop from the yeerk ship. They're humanoid, but that's all I can tell until they come closer. I heard voices from my hiding place the first time around, but not clearly enough to make out the conversation. This is new to me. This, I will remember.

The leader of the yeerk invasion of Earth strolls up to the downed Skrull as if meeting an old friend in the park.

"Princess Anelle," he says in greeting. "It's been too long." He smiles, his bright white teeth shining. With his Kree host's blond hair, broad jaw and movie-star looks, you'd never know a grimy slug lurks behind blue eyes.

"Visser Three," she spits back. "It hasn't been long enough."

"No need to be rude when we know each other so-" he pauses for effect- "_intimately_."

"You are not Captain Mar-Vell," she tells him. "You are a parasite, a vermin. And one day, my people will exterminate you all." She looks away from him, as if dismissing his existence as unimportant.

Visser Three talks a good game, but he's arrogant and impatient, and Anelle must have known that, too. Visser Three trembles in anger, pulls and arm back and punches her in the face. Anelle barely reacts, and actually smiles a bit. Not many things can easily take a Kree punch, but a Skrull is one of them.

As if just realizing this, Visser Three roars in anger, a sound that was much more terrifying a year ago. Now, even knowing what comes next, part of my mind notices how pathetic Visser Three is. He was trying to banter with Anelle, got burned, and couldn't think of something to say to save face. He's throwing a tantrum because Anelle called him vermin.

The fact that his tantrums come with an army of blade-wielding lizard people and blaster-wielding human Controllers is what makes him dangerous.

Visser Three snatches a Dracon Beam cannon from the arms of a subordinate, and dispassionately empties the battery into Princess Anelle's body. I flinch as the first rays hit, and take to the sky.

I wanted to know what happened, but I don't need to see this. I don't need to see our hero's body disintegrated in front of me.

_She just wanted to help us,_ Teddy says in shock. _She wanted to save the Earth_.

_We're her legacy_, I tell Teddy. _and we're going to make sure her gift destroys the yeerks_.

Far below us, Visser Three stares down at the remains of Princess Anelle. He frowns, snorts, and surveys the surrounding area.

"There were others here," he announces. "Find them. Kill them."

The kids can't hear him, I realize. I didn't hear him, a year ago. They're on the outskirts of the lawn, hiding behind bushes and fountains and ornamental statues. And if it wasn't Visser Three that made them run, maybe it was-

_**RUN**_ I scream at them. Simultaneously, six kids flinch at the strength of the demand. Unfamiliar to thought-speak, they will each individually assume it to be an echo of Anelle's last words to them. The command will sink into their brains, and one by one they will all dart from their hiding places and flee. They will run and run and they won't stop running until either they are home or they can't run anymore. They'll run like the devil in on their heels.

The Controllers see the movement across the lawn, and they scurry after the indistinct shapes of six fleeing kids.

_We have to do-_

Noh-Varr leaps out from behind a tree as a human Controller passes. He easily wrestles her to the ground and takes her Dracon beam cannon.

-_something._

Noh-Varr takes aim and shoots the cannon across the lawn, not aiming at specific people so much as trying to create maximum chaos. Several controllers scatter in the wake of the blast, trying to escape the energy beam. Another Controller fires back toward Noh-Varr, sending another half-dozen Controllers running, and missing Noh-Varr completely.

"You idiots!" Visser Three screams. "What are you-" This is about the point that I dive-bomb his face. Twenty pounds of vulture hits his face at forty miles an hour, surprising the shit out of him and distracting him from whatever order he was about to give his subordinates.

I scratch at his face with my claws, then beat my wings harder and get the hell out of there before he can grab me with Kree hands. Kree strength would snap my bones like crackers. I don't need to be dead to be a distraction.

Teddy screeches a horrifying, shrill tone, and dive-bombs another Controller. By now everyone who isn't dodging Dracon beams is staring up at the sky, squinting and trying to avoid attacking birds.

_WE WILL EXTERMINATE YOU LIKE THE VERMIN YOU ARE_! Teddy screams in public though-speech, the equivalent of broadcasting at top volume.

I think Teddy got the memo.

Every few seconds the yard is illuminated by the light of Dracon blasts, and it's during one of these moments that I see Cassie dodge across the lawn, darting between hiding places.

This is bad. Unlike Noh-Varr, Cassie has a public identity. If the yeerks see her here, they might recognize her and take their anger out on Cassie's past self- possibly erasing our Cassie from existence.

Condors can't screech, so I only grunt and growl as I swoop down and rake a Controller's head with my claws. He screams and throws himself to the ground, effectively increasing the chaos on this side of the lawn.

_Teddy, get back and demorph_, I tell him privately, _A Skrull loose in the neighborhood should be enough of a distraction for Cassie to get away._

He lets out one more screech and pretends to dive-bomb a Hork-Bijar again, feinting left before he got within blade-range , before he answers.

_On it_.

Noh-Varr's survived so long by luck, agility, and the fact that he looks like any other humanoid in the darkness, and the Controllers, unlike their leader, are reluctant to fire at someone who might be an ally.

His luck can't last indefinitely.

Another Controller wielding a Dracon cannon gets close enough to lock onto him. Her host is a middle-aged woman in a skirt suit, who has at least traded her work shoes for dirty white sneakers before she came out to fight.

"Die," she snarls as the cannon whirrs to life and fires a massive blast of energy right for Noh-Varr.

_No_! I scream. A few Controllers look around, trying to find the source of my voice, but other than that I am helpless.

Noh-Varr drops his own weapon and throws himself to the side, trying to avoid the worst of the blast.

My Condor nose smells burning flesh. This excites my morph's instincts, which urge me to find the wounded animal and eat it. I want to be sickened by the thought, but the Condor's stomach is interested rather than disgusted.

I circle in the sky above the blast, the hot air lifting me up higher than I'd like to be.

My eyes search the area for Noh-Varr's body. He's Kree. He's durable. He could have survived the blast…

The harrier finds him first. This is how the condor mind sees it:

_A much smaller bird dives past me. I think about reaching out a talon and ripping it out of the air, but there is death and injury below me, and food is plentiful, so I don't bother._

_It dives down, down, down, toward the burning-meat smell. It pulls out of the dive ten feet above the ground, and as it slows, it changes. It grows, contorts, mutates._

_It drops like a stone those last few feet, and what lands on the dirt is a huge green scaled creature, something that smells more like a lizard than anything else, but not by much._

Teddy snarls at the surrounding controllers, and the sight of a full-grown Skrull is intimidating enough that several back away in fear.

Noh-Varr's body moves. He tries to push himself up, but falls back down. Teddy curls his body over top of him, looking like some sort of humanoid dinosaur protecting his young.

I hear Cassie scream. I fold my wings and drop from the sky, scaring the hell out of the Controller who had her arms wrapped around Cassie's neck. I land on the woman's back and begin pecking at her face, which is enough to make even the most loyal yeerk let go.

Cassie falls to the ground, holding her throat and breathing deeply.

_You ok?_ I ask worriedly.

"I hate this. I want to go _home_!" she croaks.

Yeah, me too, I answer.

She lifts herself out of the dirt, and for a moment I think I see something bright and blue shine in the debris by her feet, then-

_**Leaving so soon?**_

Thought-speech sounds like a voice in your head, but this was more than that. This was a concept that repeated several times, from different angles, as if echoing. This came from everywhere, from within, from outside, from myself. This was loud and overpowering, but felt like a whisper in the dark.

As soon as the words faded from my mind, we were home.


End file.
